What are some of the most common causes of knee pain in runners?
Runners often suffer from overuse injuries or repetitive stress injuries. These include stress fractures, stress reactions, tendonitis, meniscal tears, ITB Friction syndrome, and exacerbation of pre-existing arthritis. Runners are a great group to treat; they will do anything to return to running! But that can also get them in trouble. The MRI image at left is a hip. The bright white signal was a stress fracture. If this patient had not “listened” to her body and come in when she did, the stress fracture would have become a complete fracture and surgery would have been necessary. Runners may continue running with many other ailments — my job is to let you know when it is okay to keep going, and when rest is necessary to prevent further damage.
