hey do you have pain on the inside of your knee and you think that you might have torn
the ligament here specifically the mcl ligament or the medial collateral ligament is ligament
that's on the inside of your knee and that one often gets stretched out sprained is another
name for that or even torn in some cases and the good news about this ligament is it can heal
naturally it usually does not require surgery you just got to make sure that you do the right
treatment which I'll talk about in a separate video but what you need to know right now
is do you even have an mcl tear or could it be something else because there's lots of reasons
that you can have pain on the inside of the knee you'll want to watch this video to the end so that
you can fully understand whether or not you've got an mcl tear and if you don't have an mcl
tear i've linked in the description below another video that talks about a bunch of other reasons
why you might have pain on the inside of the knee and ways to determine what the cause of your inner
knee pain is my name is dr david minoff and i'm a specialist physical therapist at el paso manual
physical therapy and this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy active and mobile
while avoiding unnecessary surgery injections and pain medications please subscribe so you don't
miss out on any of the helpful videos that we post every single week so let's cover the symptoms and
the diagnosis tests for an mcl injury and you'll be able to do this on your own now the symptoms
are a big deal because if you if you've got the the symptoms associated with this and part of
that is the history of what happened to you then that's a big determining factor in the diagnosis
for the symptoms usually there's an accident of some sort not always but oftentimes there is
and the accident happens in such a way where someone falls into the outside of your leg or you
get shoved or your knee collapses inwards somehow through a series of events usually the people are
playing sports they're active somehow people that have this injury the classic mcl injury is
soccer football basketball those those sports people fall into the side of the leg
and it just over stretches the inside of the of the knee right here and that that's where the mcl
lives right here it connects the shin bone to the thigh bone and so when it just gets over stretched
that's what causes the sprain or the the injury to the knee in sports in the sports world they
often call this a sprained knee there's a bunch of ligaments if you injure any of
those ligaments we'll call it a sprained knee but specifically the mcl is on the inside of the knee
this usually affects people in their teenage years 20s and 30s and that's because they tend to be a
little bit more active people that are older than that are usually in their careers and working more
and just aren't as active but it does happen in active individuals that are older than 40 50
60 years old of course a big symptom is inner knee pain so if you've got pain right on the
inside of the knee and it doesn't really bother you anywhere else like on the front on the outside
of the back of the knee then that's a specific sign that you probably have an mcl tear and one
of the other big determining factors here as far as symptoms go is clicking or popping if you have
notable clicking or popping that started after the knee pain started and especially if you
had an accident and you began to notice the clicking or popping then there's a chance that
that ligament is so over stretched that it's no longer providing stability to the joint because
what that ligament does just to show you on the skeleton here along with other ligaments in the
knee that ligament connects from about right here to about right here and helps to keep the
inside of the knee stable so if you've got that part of the knee loose this joint has a bit more
flexibility than it should and when you go to step or walk or run or do things the joint moves around
a little extra can cause a repeatable click now if it pops or clicks once like you know
joints pop in your neck or your back just once and it you can't reproduce it you can't do it
again then i wouldn't be too concerned that might increase anyway if you've got this mcl injury
but i wouldn't worry about it because virtually any injury to the knee can cause the stiffness
in the knee that causes it to pop and feel like it got looser all of a sudden what i'm talking about
is if you're walking and every fifth step you notice like a little click or a shift or a pop
and that's consistent or another way that you can get is if you bend and straighten your knee
and every so often on a consistent basis you feel a click and they do it again and
click pop or a shift even can happen where it feels like something moved inside your knee
that is a big determining factor in deciding if you have an mcl tear or a partial tear as well
because it's possible to not completely rip the tendon i'm sorry the ligament but to partially
rip the ligaments which still decreases the stability in the joint from the ligament
so now let's talk about the diagnosis of an mcl tear there's two things you're going to look at
now first off i need you to find the ligament on yourself so you got to get good at a little bit
of poking around it is directly on the innermost part of your knee and it runs up and down along
your knee joint from the the end of the thigh bone here to the top of the shin bone so you have to
find your joint line now the knee is a pretty big joint but you know with all your tissues
and everything it's kind of hard to determine exactly where the joint line is but watch this
knee joint here when i bend and straighten the knee you can see how the shin bone moves
quite a bit over the end of the thigh bone where you're going to feel for that motion in your knee
because once you can feel the motion then you know exactly where the joint line is
and you can go up a bit from there and down a bit from there to determine where your mcl is
and get my skeleton out of the way so all you're going to do here is
wrap your hands around your knee this is just to find exactly where the pins at and you don't
have to interlock your fingers i'm just doing this right here it's okay if you're like this
there isn't a specific way once you got your knee once you're holding on to your knee just move it
around and i can feel the shin bone moving up over my thigh bone about right there my
kneecaps right here shin bones right there so i found the joint line now i'm going to go inwards
on my joint line and on the innermost part before it starts going back into your knee that's where
your mcl is so if you just poke it right along the joint line and it hurts okay it might be your mcl
but it could be your meniscus it could be other things there's several things that cause
inner knee pain go to the description to find the link to the video that talks about other things
that could be causing your inner knee pain but if you go down just about an inch or so a couple
centimeters and up a couple centimeters or an inch and if it's tender in those areas as well not just
one spot at the joint line but a little below and a little above then likely you've got an injured
mcl ligament now there's one more test that you got to do and this one's a bit more challenging
to do on your own but you should be able to do it with my instruction here you're going to stress
the mcl here this is what doctors will do in the clinic this is what a physical therapist might do
it might hurt just a bit you can moderate you can control the pressure here to determine
you know how much you want to give and you've got to test both sides to be able to determine
a comparison to see if it's the same as the other side or if there's a difference
on your injured side now this test if you can do it successfully is very revealing and it'll
be pretty certain if you've got all the other signs and symptoms that i've talked about
and then this test is positive or in other words it's it's
your stress test is showing that your mcl is loose then you're you've got pretty good certainty that
your mcl is involved here which is good because now you can determine what to do next you know
what what next steps to take so what you're going to do is is put your foot up on a chair
your knee's going to be kind of bent and then you got to drop your leg inwards like so you might be
able to get away with doing this on the floor you just got to put your leg in a slightly bent
position and drop your whole leg inwards then carefully you're going to take a couple hands
over your knee and start to apply some pressure so that you're bending your knee inwards this way but
really you're gonna be pushing down because your legs rotated in and you're just gonna lean into it
gradually and if you feel any pain or discomfort that's it just stop right there you're also noting
how far your knee moves that way so everybody's knees should give
just a bit but if if you kind of just watch how much it gives and compare this to the other side
put your leg in the same inwards position hand over hand and if you're like oh wow
this one doesn't hurt as bad as my other one and it doesn't it's stiffer which is good that's the
way it's supposed to be this one's kind of loose when i compare and it hurts a bit that's a clear
sign that you've got an mcl injury it might be a partial tear complete tears usually swell up quite
a bit and you kind of know when you got it but if you have a partial tear and you're not sure you
got that clicking you you had a sports accident sometimes it just happens without an accident it
could be other factors the way that you're moving the way that you're training muscle imbalances and
the like um but you can now determine if you've got an mcl tear using these tests now if you do
have an mcl tear you've done all these tests and you determine that it's you likely have an mcl
tear you need to brace your knee that's one of the big treatments for this bracing your knee using a
brace just like this one really helps to provide stability to that to the knee joint so that it's
not hurting as much and you're not over stretching the ligament but it protects the ligament so that
it can heal ligaments should heal within a few weeks to at most a couple of months if you're
allowing it the space and time the support to heal once you heal you should be able to get
back to normal activities and you got to look at just preventing the injury from happening again so
i like this brace a lot i'll put a link to a brace like this in the description below you need to get
one that has some stiff brackets on either side and ideally hinges this one has some hinges inside
so a simple brace sleeve without hinges typically doesn't do enough doesn't give you enough support
the ones with the brackets on the sides are much better for an mcl injury you need to get that
the the hinged brace it just makes a world of a difference and saves you a bunch of time and
other problems from developing like a meniscus tear or an acl tear which is even worse
you just need to protect that ligament and give it some time to heal and this brace does a fantastic
job of that now don't forget if you found that you don't have an mcl tear go to the description
and find the video there that talks about other reasons you could have inner knee pain hey give
us a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to our channel thanks so much guys have a great day