Hello all, On January 3rd 2013 I managed to tear my meniscus in the rear right knee. I have been going to physio since and not been playing competitively at all. However, last week I did play for fun and did not experience any swelling of pain afterwards. I did wear a basic knee support and this seemed to help greatly. I can lunge and squat effectively now. Has anyone had this injury before and did you play badminton while injured?
I have the same problem and it still hasn't healed for me. I continue playing though, there haven't been any side effects till now. I can play normally, without any pain. The doc advised me to do some exercises to strengthen my legs and take break from playing.
Most important advice is to let pain be your guide. If it hurts, don't do it. Stationary exercise biking is excellent for knee rehab.
Hi, I missed this post before. I have the injury in my non-dominant knee. There are different types of meniscus tears. For instance, if you have a bucket handle type, that's quite a big piece of loose cartilage. Whereas, there are other less severe meniscus tears. I had the same symptoms but would have quite a bit of pain after playing that would stop me from getting on court for another 10 days or so. I would also get tightness of my hamstring. This hampered me for a year even getting consultations from orthopaedics. It took a good physio to correctly diagnose associated medial collateral ligament damage. I needed a course of physiotherapy and acupuncture which helped a lot and I could get back to playing. They recommend to keep doing exercises on which I am rather lazy and I prefer to do it court! Keeping things reasonable, if I have not been able to play for a while, I build up the difficulty in games gradually over a couple of weeks. Sometimes I do wear a knee support, sometimes not. It depends how strong I feel the knee has been over the previous few weeks. Little exercise in the preceding few weeks = put the knee support on. Personally, I think all it does is help keep the knee warm, which helps for me. I did go back to playing singles and training. Tried to be careful and not do prolonged routines at one stretch. I was able to play in the HK championships and play some tough 3 gamers. I eventually lost to an ex-national player and was quite disappointed at my performance. However, quite a few people said I had already done well and it's really tough for us amateurs to try to match ex-professional players who have trained full time in the past.
If you play without corrective surgery - Chances are you'd end up playing for some time before you get the injury again. If you really want to play long - I'd advise corrective ligament repair surgery followed by period of rehab. I know 2 guys with similar injury. One has stopped playing just because the injury recurred after 1 year of playing with a tear. Other underwent corrective surgery and started playing within 6 mons of it. He plays almost 90-95% of what he used to play before the injury/surgery, which I think is quite commendable. Conclusion - if you wish to play long, corrective procedure is the way. This is because ligaments are support to the knees, which bears the weight of entire body. A little offbeat pressure on the unstable setup (like a tear) can really aggravate the injury further. A stitch in time saves nine
After reading all these posts about surgery and medical procedures, it has got me a bit worried. Is this injury really that serious? As Visor said, I'm letting my pain be my guide for now and I'm doing alright. I was hoping this would be just one of those injuries which you can shake off after sometime without any side effects. I can't afford to have corrective surgery or MRIs anyway, I'm a college student.
It should be fine for the moment, but if it's truly a bucket handle type tear as Cheung says, then it can extend and worsen with a forceful impact, especially where one lands on one leg and happens to rotate on it at the same time with a lot of body weight on it. That would be the worst scenario. Whatever you do, remember to protect that knee from that type of injury. It's not worth winning a point over.
I don't think it is the bucket handle type but I'm no expert in diagnosis. I think my injury is because of stress; I had an accident where my knee got hurt. I play with some intensity and that might have caused this. Hopefully, it isn't much. You do have a point, I didn't take care of my leg after the accident and this happened. Will try to be more careful from now on.
You may not have a meniscal tear... only arthroscopy or MRI can tell if there's one. Symptomatically, there would be locking of the knee being unable to fully extend, pain with squatting, getting out of the car, and even pain when simply turning over in bed. If you don't have these, then most likely you don't have meniscal tear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tear_of_meniscus#Symptoms_and_signs
Oh.... I don't know whether that's good news or bad news... I went to the doctor and she said the same thing, only an MRI can really tell what's going on. I can't afford one now. But, I guess it isn't a meniscus tear. I do have a very very subtle swelling and rarely have pain walking.
I'd say its way too risky to just assume things. I'd suggest, start saving for a MRI. Get it done. It will give a fair enough idea. In the meanwhile avoid playing too much (i know what it means for being told not to play at all). Whenever you play, play a very safe game - avoid stressing too much and smashing in a non comfortable position. Once you rule out a major injury, you can relax a bit.
Injuries come in different grades. There are many personal factors that factor in a person's decision whether to go for investigation. Restriction of lifestyle or activities of daily living are some things to consider. If you can do all these normally and still play badminton without much problem, most people would tend to see how things go. Now if your job was an elite sports person, your decision would be slightly different as you need to get back to functioning at a high level as quickly as possible. Then again, conventional ideas may not be taken up. I know of a top martial arts instructor who has torn ACLs. Yet he refuses to go for surgery as he can still function properly! Paroxysmal, slight clarification - the meniscus is cartilage, not a ligament.
^^ agree with what you say. Yes, meniscus is a cartilage. Along with other important ligaments, it supports the weight of whole body. I strongly feel, any injury to the knee stability structure must be corrected on priority basis to prevent further damage. Having said so, I dont agree with the martial arts instructor. If nothing happens to him inspite of not undergoing the corrective procedure, he'd just be lucky. Unfortunately, this doesnt hold true for many of us.
