Knee Injury and the 'The Unhappy Triad'

Featuring Lieon Kit, DPT, MEd, CSCS, MCPA, Physiotherapist, Marpole Physiotherapy Clinic Duration: 2 minutes, 28 seconds

The unhappy triad is a major injury that can happen to a knee. It usually happens in contact sports or even motor vehicle accidents.

Let me just demonstrate this on this knee model here. So this knee model here, this is the front of the kneecap. This is the outside of the knee, as well – this is the inside of the knee.

With the unhappy triad there's usually a force that happens right through here and can rupture the medial collateral ligament as well as the medial and lateral meniscus as well as the anterior crucial ligament, which all stabilizes the knee joint here.

Some of the symptoms that you may feel with the unhappy triad include – you may hear a pop when the injury occurred. There could be lots of pain and swelling, maybe difficulty to straighten or bending your leg. Your knee might feel quite unstable.

With the torn meniscus you might feel the catching or locking of the knee as you're walking, may be harder to put weight onto your knee or walking just as you're getting up from the injury.

Some of the treatment methods usually – most likely because it could be a fairly severe injury it’s usually a surgical intervention of possibly the ACL and the meniscus. Usually the MCL is – not operative treatment is preferred.

If it is not or even if it’s after the surgery you will still have to go through a rehabilitation process as well as physical therapy. Some of the things that we focus on with physical therapy is to control the pain and the swelling immediately and also try to regain your range of motion and allow proper tissue healing so you can get back to your work or sport as fast as possible.

One of the things that we do is to prescribe you a knee brace that will be helpful for you to get to back to activities of daily living, also help you go through your rehabilitation with increasing strength, increasing range of motion, and also increasing function so you get back to your everyday activity as soon as you can.

So if you suspect that you have a knee injury that could be an unhappy triad please consult your physician or physiotherapist to get a proper diagnosis so you can get back to work or play, however you can as soon as you can.

Presenter: Mr. Lieon Kit, Physiotherapist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Physiotherapist