What does meniscopathy mean?

Meniscopathy is a disorder related to the knee and more precisely refers to meniscus injuries. In most cases, meniscopathy is evidenced by structural examinations, being a pathology that affects more than 50% of sportsmen. The meniscus is placed between the tibia and the femoral condyle is of fibro-cartilaginous structure and has the function of a bearing to cushion and absorb shocks and of a shock absorber for the uniform distribution of the applied loads. Inside each knee you can distinguish two types of meniscus: one lateral and one medial.

How it arises

Meniscopathy can be traumatic in nature or degenerative in nature. The traumatic one arises as a result of trauma or rather of stresses that being excessive compared to the maximum tolerance of resistance of the meniscus, create a series of injuries. The degenerative one, on the other hand, arises especially when the age is advanced and a process of deterioration of the fibrocartilaginous tissue that covers the meniscus occurs.

Symptoms and diagnostic tests

An experienced orthopedist can easily diagnose meniscopathy through the description of the symptoms by the patient, but the certainty is given mainly by an MRI or CT scan. Pain is certainly a wake-up call, but it does not always appear in an initial state. Sometimes it can manifest itself in a more advanced state, that is, when lesions of the menisci due to certain movements give joint stiffness, severe pain and swelling.

Indicated treatments

The applied therapeutic method for meniscopathy can be of two types: conservative or surgical. The first involves rest, ice packs and anti-inflammatories. The surgical intervention instead, to date, provides for the only suturing of the lesion or the partial removal of the affected part. In fact, as was the case in the past, the total removal of the meniscus induced patients to generate more easily arthrosis or degenerative diseases; therefore, only in the most severe cases is this type of intervention expected.

Osteoplus® therapy

In both cases, the Osteoplus® biostimulator is particularly effective on this pathology. The biostimulating action, in fact, produces a powerful anti-edema, anti-inflammatory and vascularizing effect with enormous benefits on pain already from the first applications.

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Running properly

Running injuries are due to several reasons: inadequate technique, non-customized shoes and biomechanical stress. These are all factors that increase the risk of injury.

Let’s start from the first point: how to correct the run?

Here are some tips for the experienced sportsman who although he will have more difficulty changing his way of running, he can on the other hand, start analyzing the static and dynamic footprint of the foot.

Listening to the pitch.

A loud sound of the foot when leaning on the ground, indicates that you are exerting too much pressure on the leg against the ground. The pressure spreads over all the joints that make up the leg, and as the step increases there is possible damage to the fascia, Achilles tendon, patella or hip.

Listening to pain.

Generally athletes wait for the debilitating pain to stop and until this happens, they continue to train. It is good practice to stop at least three days as soon as the first and mild pains appear, although not disabling. If the pain eases you can resume sports activity, if it increases, contact a specialist.

Among the athletes involved we find in particular former professionals who run for pleasure races or to keep fit: these have less perception of pain and their body than an amateur who has never done professional competitive activity.

Listening to the performance.

When an athlete who has been doing his normal training for a while does not see his performance increase in two or three weeks, he hides a latent pain. It is good to understand the cause by studying not only the type of training (number of km, type of soil, speed) but also by performing movement texts.

What to do in case of non-listening and the presence of the lesion?

Absolute rest is recommended accompanied by ice packs and painkillers if necessary. If the pain persists consult a specialist to make an exact diagnosis of the possible pathology and identify the correct treatment and therapy to follow.

Skiing, the sport that causes numerous injuries

The most frequent injuries in skiing are mainly bruises and injuries to the knee, shoulder and hand. Injuries to the wrist and collarbone have increased with the practice of snowboarding especially among amateurs.

Frequent injuries

In particular among the frequent injuries we find the lesion of the anterior cruciate ligament and the internal lateral ligament caused by both trauma and biomechanics of the knee.

Also frequent shoulder injuries such as dislocations. The shoulder joint is the most mobile and therefore also the most unstable joint of the whole body. To weld it needs strong ligaments and tendons, but if these from a trauma suffered should break, the shoulder loses its stability. The so-called “misplaced bone ” occurs: deformity of the shoulder and inability to move it.

Treatment consists in immediate reduction and immobilization of the limb.

In injuries of the anterior cruciate ligament, a sharp rotation of the body on the tibia occurs, producing a forced rotational movement in the knee. This occurs in the falls of the skier backwards, when the knee is in a hyperflective position while undergoing the rotation of the tibia.

Hand injury known as “skier’s thumb”. It is produced by falls in which the finger undergoes sudden lateral movement. Rupture of the internal ligament that stabilizes the joint of the metacarpal with the first phalanx occurs. Immediate symptoms: pain and swelling. In severe and acute injuries treatment is surgical before certain gripping movements are impaired.

Gender, skier ability or age can affect sports activity as well as fitness, muscle balance and external factors such as boots, skis, attacks or the type of snow.

The phantom foot mechanism and the front drawer mechanism induced by ski boots for example lead to damage to the anterior cruciate ligament.

Women suffer from a higher percentage of anterior cruciate ligament injuries than men.

The immediate symptoms of an anterior cruciate ligament injury are pain and inability to walk.

Treatments and remedies

Care: reduce inflammation and immobilize the part involved; in the case of a slight distortion, a compressive bandage should be applied. If the pain persists it is good to consult a specialist to make an exact diagnosis of the possible pathology and identify the correct treatment and therapy to follow.

Cartilage injury

Patellar chondropathy is the disease or injury of the articular cartilage of the patella that is manifested by pain localized in the front of the knee.

Cause

The patellar injury also called patellar femoral syndrome, is one of the most frequent traumatic processes, especially in athletes, and is due to multiple causes. The inflammation is also known with the phrase “knee of the jumper”, because it is mainly the athletes who strain the knee, putting it under stress with the jumps; for this reason among the sportsmen involved we find volleyball players and basketball players.

Among the causes include: repeated trauma to the knee, and the overhead of repetitive motions for a long period of time, which leads to compression of the cartilage; structural factors such as the alignment of the knee or the position of the patella; metabolic factors such as a lack of vascularization of the bone under the cartilage; pathological factors such as the degeneration of the cartilage.

Diagnosis

It often happens that there is no specific correlation between pain and anatomical damage and therefore the diagnosis may initially not be intuitive: for example we can be faced with very painful and disabling processes that see minimal involvement of cartilage.

For diagnosis, MRI with contrast is useful for detecting advanced lesions.

The definitive diagnosis of patellar chondropathy is made by arthroscopy that assesses the condition of the cartilage or the existence of lesions not detected before with MRI or when the pain persists despite the measures put in place to contain it.

Treatments

The first step of treatment lies in solving the factors that trigger or aggravate the condition: knee misalignment, patella, obesity, meniscopathy.

The second step is a medical treatment, through oral or intra-articular analgesics, and physical therapy to improve the muscles. Physical rehabilitation is often recommended since patellar chondropathy is often accompanied by patello-femoral instability.

Osteoplus^® therapy with biostimulating action acts as an anti-inflammatory agent and stimulating the profiling of cartilage.

Where conservative treatment does not produce the desired effects, surgical therapy is recommended

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The most frequent injuries in the runner usually originate in mechanical overload produced by a high training load, inadequate running technique and altered biomechanics. Injuries of the runner are of a different nature.

Tendinopathies: tendonitis, patellar tendinosis and Achilles Tendinopathy.

Muscle injuries: acute such as fiber rupture and muscle contracture or chronic when there was pre-existing physical damage at the base.

Bone injuries: fatigue or stress fractures, most commonly located in the metatarsus especially the fifth metatarsus.

Among the most frequent pathologies are tibial periostitis and plantar fasciitis.

We can also classify and distinguish injuries based on their location:

Pelvis-deep buttock syndrome or pyramidal syndrome where pain is localized in the buttock region and radiates to the knee.

Front knee-patello femoral syndrome, also known as the “runner’s knee” syndrome, is characterized by pain in the front area of the knee that appears when squatting your legs or climbing stairs.

Lateral knee-ileotibial band syndrome, typical runner tendonitis that manifests itself when we run for a few minutes. It is such a paralyzing pain that it causes the sportsman to stop.

Internal knee-tendonitis / tendinopathy of the crow’s foot causes pain when descending from a high point (like going down the stairs), and if it evolves it can cause pain even in a lying position (in bed).

There are recommendations and advice to avoid such injuries.

For beginners: start with caution and without overdoing it, use the right shoes. Better if these are customized and tailor-made according to height and weight and with shock absorbers. It is important to understand what kind of terrain we are going to run on in order to choose shoes with soles that suit us.

In this sense, it is good to start on soft surfaces and progress slowly avoiding overloading the feet and knees.

Important is the biomechanical appearance of the joints. The body must adapt to the technique of sports, the muscles get used to a job that they had never done before. To avoid injuries, stretching exercises are recommended at the end of each workout, to stretch and stretch the muscles involved and not only (from the buttock to the thigh, from the calf to the sole of the foot).

Carpal Tunnel

Motorcyclists are those most prone to suffer wrist injury, known as carpal tunnel syndrome. The cause of the lesion is to identify several factors: repetitive movements, vibration of the handlebar, the pressure on the wrist joint for a prolonged period of time and the constant use of the wrists to control friction and acceleration. These mechanisms cause repeated pressures that accumulate at the same point and injury to the wrist joint.

Carpal tunnel syndrome is given by continuous pressure on the median nerve. The tissue in the tunnel becomes inflamed, becoming edematous and swollen.

Among the symptoms: tingling, muscle weakness of the hand and pain.

Among the most common injuries are: strain injury trapeze occurs when the arms are very high and elongated; the lesion from overloading the anterior tibialis is caused when the motorcyclist, along a road with many curves, overloaded the left foot on the gear lever; the lesion of the sciatic nerve arises from poor posture; the lesion from epicondylitis occurs in case of repetitive movements of wrist extension and supination of the forearm.

To prevent the many injuries described, it is good first of all to review the mechanical trim of the bike: control the vibrations of the handlebar and balance the wheels.

Wearing gloves of the right size and with padding in the palms will provide a feeling of softness and comfort while holding the handlebar.

Even wearing clothing of the correct size can be useful: in this way blood circulation is not hindered and veins are not blocked inside the carpal tunnel.

It is important to adopt a correct posture with relaxed arms, elbows flexed avoiding to dump all the weight on the wrists.

Place the palms of the hands on the handles making them match harmoniously with the inclination of the handlebar.

It is also a good habit to perform a stretching session before training to prepare the joint and after training to relieve overload on the wrists.

In case of acute pain it is good to consult a specialist for a more thorough visit. If the symptoms described are present it is good to follow the treatment as directed by the doctor; this will allow you to return to driving in a shorter period of time.