Knee Injury Quiz

The correct answer is true. The patella, or kneecap, is a round, movable bone located in the front of the knee. Commonly injured by blunt-force impact like a car accident, a fall, or a sports injury, symptoms of a fractured patella may include sharp pain, redness, swelling, or discomfort that worsens when you bend it. Prompt treatment usually results in a full recovery.

For each pound of extra weight a person carries, four extra pounds of pressure are placed on the knees. Therefore someone only five pounds overweight is exerting twenty pounds of excess pressure on the knees. A stressed knee wears down more quickly, so people who know they are genetically prone to osteoarthritis could benefit greatly by managing their weight.

The correct answer is false. No evidence exists to show that the weather alone has any impact on the severity of arthritis symptoms.

With most chronic, non-injury related knee pain, taking it easy is not a solution. Some people mistakenly think that if they decrease their physical activity, they will reduce the amount of stress they place on their knee joints and ease their chronic knee pain. In fact, the more you move, the better you maintain range of motion in your knee. Additionally, keeping the muscles surrounding your knee strong can improve your symptoms—and exercise will help you avoid putting the significant strain of excess weight on your knees. Your doctor or physical therapist can help you with exercises that can strengthen your knee muscles and potentially ease your pain.

Referred pain is pain from a deep injury that is felt somewhere else in the body due to a network of nerves that pass the pain signals elsewhere. Pain felt in the knee can, in fact, be referred from the hip, lower back, or the ankle.

Both cold and heat are useful for arthritis in the knee. For example, the application of heat in the morning can relax your knee which may have stiffened overnight, and applying ice at night can reduce the inflammation in your knee that is caused by all the day’s activities.

This is true. Stretching exercises, including yoga, help to enhance the elasticity of your knee joint and reduce the risk of joint overload. In addition to a healthy warmup, stretching after exercise can help you avoid painful knee conditions like patellar tendon syndrome.