Meniscus Tear Vs ACL Tear: Which Is Worse?

Did you hurt your knee and you are wondering if you’ve got an ACL tear or a meniscus tear? And worse yet, you’re thinking which is worse? Am I going to be worse off if I have a meniscus tear? Or if I have an ACL tear? Let me give you the answer right now, a meniscus tear is going to be worse. I

n the long term, you want to manage it more so because the long term is going to get worse for you, in the short term, and ACL tear is going to bother you more, it causes more problems up front, but usually can be managed very well so that it doesn’t cause long term problems. Both can be managed well without surgery.

In this video, today, I’m going to explain all the differences between a meniscus tear and an ACL tear. And you’ll want to watch to the end because then I’m going to explain about what will happen, what to do if you’ve got both happening at the same time, which is a possibility.

I’m Dr. David, I’m a specialist physical therapist with El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And this channel is focused on helping people stay active, healthy and mobile. while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections, and pain medications. Be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so that you can know whenever we release helpful new videos to keep you healthy, active and mobile.

In this video, today, we’re talking meniscus tears versus ACL tears. But I do want to let you know that we’ve got a video called How to test and heal a meniscus tear without surgery, it’s linked down in the description. We’ve also got a video called How to test and heal an ACL tear without surgery also down in the description.

So, if you want to hear more details about how to test it yourself at home, this isn’t a test you’d need a specialist for you would do this on your own at home. And then figure out what the next first steps are to get this ACL or meniscus problem healing, go check out those videos down in the description below. Now let’s talk about ACL tears. Because those are typically the more urgent you need to deal with.

If you’ve got an ACL tear, chances are you’ve had some accident, maybe small, maybe big, if it was a big accident, you probably had a lot of swelling, maybe went to the emergency room, maybe had an ambulance pick you up and take you there. And it’s going to be pretty obvious if you have an ACL tear.

But it is quite common to get a sprain, like where you kind of hurt your knee, maybe you twist it funny you land funny, or you take a bad step, or somebody bumps into you and it makes your knee move a little awkward. And it didn’t really you can still walk in it, you can still do a lot, maybe it’s a little swollen, maybe it’s not bending all the way or straightening out all the way. But it’s kind of works, it just hurts a bit.

You can have an ACL that got stretched out, we call it a laxity, where it’s not fully torn, maybe there’s a partial tear, but it was definitely stretched out. And it’s not working the way that it should anymore. Let me show you this picture here, just so you can tell the difference. And what I’m talking about. So here we’ve got the ACL tear. And this is the thigh bone here the femur.

And here’s the shin bone, the tibia, in this blue line is what the ACL would be like it connects from the back of the thigh bone the femur towards and it goes to the front and inwards to the tibia. And in an ACL tear, this thing gets cut right there. And you end up losing the strongest one of the strongest connections between the thigh bone and the shin bone into the knee starts to jostle around a bit.

People that have this kind of injury and ACL tear, will often feel like there’s popping and clicking in the knee joint, they might just be sitting around, they could be lying in bed, and when they go to move their leg to reposition their body, the joint might just click and shift. Also, when they’re walking around, it might click and shift it tends to happen with more trivial motions, nothing intense.

And it’s a lighter injury and more of a sprain and knee sprain and ACL sprain, people tend to feel better, the more they move around, especially if they’re if they were strong to begin with. If they already had some decent strength, especially if they were an athlete, or pretty active before, they can usually overcome the poppy and clicking and the discomfort if there’s any associated with it.

By being more active, it tends to bother them when they’re less active when they’re doing those simple little motions lying in bed or sitting around and moving to take their first steps after they get up. If it’s a small sprain, like that, it will usually get better. As long as the right things are done. It usually needs to be braced so that the ligament doesn’t get any extra pulls on it.

In that video that we’ve linked in the description, we talk exactly about what to do. And if it’s a more severe tear, maybe there’s other things involved with that ACL tear, they might need medical attention or you might just need to be on crutches for a while until that inflammation goes down enough to begin to move the knee normally, a huge concern with ACL tears is that you’re able to bend and straighten your knee out all the way with any injury.

Actually, I’d say that if you’re losing motion and you just can’t get it back as time goes on as you feel better. That’s a big concern. You need to go get some medical attention. So, you can make sure this knee gets on track. Again. The cool thing about ACL tears is after Pete, if they have a big one or even a mild one after the initial swelling and the loss of motion, there is a huge possibility to compensate for the loss of the ACL.

There’s famous people out there athletes, people that have won Super Bowls that have performed at a high level with a unconnected ACL, what they’ve done is all the other muscles around the thigh and the knee that connect the Find the knee together, because ACL isn’t the only thing that that’s connecting the two bones, you have your quad bone, your quad muscles, your calf muscles, you have other tendons and ligaments that connect the two bones together.

If you’re adequately strong in all those other tissues, it is possible to never have an ACL surgery, and be able to run and jump and do everything you were doing before. But there is just a little less margin for error. If you have a bad fall or get hurt, then it is a little more likely that you are going to hurt other stuff. But people have done it all the time.

And whenever we have clients here in the clinic that have an ACL tear, they’re able to get back to everything they were doing before, even with a severe ACL tear, we’ve had patients that have come in with a completely torn ACL diagnosed through an MRI, and they’ve gotten back to doing everything they were before.

With more severe cases, there will likely be buckling. Which means that when that person goes to stand in a walk, that knee just doesn’t feel secure, doesn’t feel safe, because the ligaments not connected. And the joint starts to shift and almost feels like it wants to go backwards like it wants to bend backwards.

That would be buckling in the sensation people gives like they need to hold on to something for balance because they essentially lost the ability to bear weight through their legs. It’s losing its connection. And that sensation, if it’s happening recurring. If it happens once or twice, you could probably heal from it.

But if it’s happening every day, multiple times a day, or even several times a week, that’s very concerning, you need to go get helped by a specialist at the very least slap on a brace, which I talked about which kind of brace to use in that video for how to heal an ACL, how to heal how to test and heal ACL injury without surgery.

And the question I get about ACL tears all the time is the swelling because there can be a lot of swelling associated with it. As long as the motions coming back, and the swelling is going down, you have an excellent shot of healing things to do to help the swelling is of course, elevating the leg, getting on some compression, so it might be a tight brace that squeezes the joints.

And most importantly, lay off the knee for a while you might have to be on crutches for just a short time, maybe a few weeks to a month to make sure that that swelling is going down. What’s going on is if that ligaments partially tore the ACL or if it’s even the full tear, it’s an injury on the inside of the knee. And so, blood went everywhere fluid extra fluid was generated, a healing process is happening.

Swelling is normal when there’s an injury like that, and it needs to take it run its course, which you have to do is be nice to your knee and not force it to walk, you know, not force it to help you walk if it’s just not ready.

If it hurts to walk in it, you should probably should not be walking on it, need to get on crutches, or use a cane or something to offload that legs that you can give it a chance to heal and for that swelling to go down.

It’s really important that you get that swelling down. By the way, if your knee is chronically swollen, you’re going to run into worse issues in this short what could be a short-term ACL tear is going to cause longer lasting problems and you’re going to develop other issues, in addition to this ACL tear.

Now meniscus tears are different, they tend to happen a little more slowly over time. Yeah, there are situations where you can have an accident like a car accident, a bike accident or a sports accident, like if somebody falls into your leg and forces your leg to bend sideways the way that it shouldn’t or backwards, you bet you can get a sudden meniscus tear. But those are less common.

The more common meniscus tears that are seen every day in healthcare offices are the type that happened gradually over time. Oftentimes, these meniscus tears are painless when they start out, nobody even knows they have them. Something happens to their to their knee, they take a bad step, they the irritation just becomes too much. And they pass a certain threshold where that meniscus tear now becomes irritated. And when they go to the doctor to get an MRI.

They find the meniscus tear that might have already been there for months or years prior, not really causing the problem. Now, the not I’m not seeing a meniscus tear isn’t a problem. I’m just saying that you can have a painless meniscus tear.

The fact that somebody has a tear to begin with is a sign that there’s been some trauma to the knee either a little bit at a time over a long period of time or there was a sudden issue that happened.

But either way it needs to be addressed so that the inflammation can come down and that meniscus tear isn’t getting worse. People that have a meniscus tear off get worse over time, they might have some pain and swelling at the beginning, especially if it’s more irritated. They might have some stiffness in the morning when they’re getting up to put the weight through their leg to bend the knee to straighten the knee.

But usually, it’ll warm up and feel better. And then the more time they’re on their feet, like if they’re at home doing chores, if they’re walking, if they’re exercising, as more than the time increases on their feet, they tend to get worse in the meniscus issue. There could be clicking or popping as well, it might make more of a crunch sound than a popping sound, although it can make a sudden pop sound.

But more often than not, it’s more like a grinding crunching sound when people are bending their knee and straightening their knee. It’s a more subtle popper click than with an ACL tear. So, it just it’s a different type of pop and click, there’s more crunching associated, that’s the biggest sign that you got a meniscus tear.

Now in a severe meniscus tear, you can get what’s called joint locking. Now just to explain the meniscus a bit more on my high-tech chart here, here’s the front view.

This was a side view of the ACL. Here’s the front view of the meniscus because here’s a thigh bone and here’s the shin bone. And in dots right there is the kneecap it’s the meniscus is in purple behind the kneecap. It’s a cushion of cartilage, that allows the thigh bone and everything above all the way to your body to be cushioned on the shin bone.

And this tissue can get torn right here, if you’re, if you’ve got a muscle imbalance usually can have a tear here, here, there’s a bunch of different types of tears and different severities, which I go into in that video about how to test and heal a meniscus tear.

But you can, the more because it’s a weight bearing structure. In other words, you’re putting weight through it, and it’s designed to bear the weight of everything above, the more weight you put on it, the more it can become irritated if it’s injured. And when it’s more of a severe tear.

If you have a chunk of it that’s hanging off, inside the knee joint, sometimes it completely breaks loose from the meniscus, then that’s when the knee joint is bending, it can get stuck on that chunk, that flap or that chunk that’s loose inside the knee to cut a loose body, then the knee won’t bend anymore or shrink, it’ll stay stuck at a certain angle. And it’s painful.

Typically, people are stuck right there, and they want to straighten out their knee to get up and walk or to do something or they want to bend their knee if they’re stuck straight, and the knee just won’t budge, it’ll stay put. And if they try to move it, it hurts, it’s painful.

That’s a sign that it’s a more severe meniscus issue. And if that’s happening on a consistent basis, if it happens, you know, one off here and there, it’s not a consistent thing, then you have a good chance of healing that meniscus tear if you do the right things.

But if it’s happening consistently, if it’s happening every other day, every day, multiple times a day, then I highly recommend you go get seen by a healthcare professional and figure out the next best steps which surgery might be a solution for you.

Especially if you have a loose body, in your knee joint, whether it’s from a meniscus or some other piece of cartilage inside the knee. That’s typically pretty severe. And getting that taken out might be a good idea in the long run. But those situations are rare.

Most of the time, knee meniscus problems can get better without surgery, having a full-on tear where there’s a flat pain out loosely in the joint or a chunk that’s just free floating in the joint. That doesn’t happen nearly as often.

So that covers my explanation on the to the next part that you need to know about this is important for you is if you don’t handle this ACL tear, or this meniscus tear properly and as soon as possible, what it can turn into is you can develop the other problems.

So, in other words, if you’ve got a meniscus tear, if you don’t properly handle it, you can eventually set up an ACL tear or other stuff like knee arthritis. And the same goes for an ACL tear. If you’ve got an ACL tear that knees loose, and you just keep living with it run into pain here and there. And it just you just let it flare up.

You’re not really actively trying to fix the issue so that you can proceed through life without the knee slowing you down without it hurting or swelling, then you’re probably aggravating the meniscus and setting up a meniscus tear and likely arthritis as well.

People that have meniscus tears an ACL tears that are not managed properly over time are the ones that tend to deal with knee arthritis issues a lot sooner. And these are the ones that end up having a knee replacement earlier in life than they should.

I mean, some people have them in their 60s, really knee replacements, if they need to happen ideally in their 80s or later. Some people are having them as early as their 50s or 60s. That means that they mismanaged a knee injury that they’ve had for a while and it’s not if you’re listening to this and you’re like me, I’m in my 50s and I’m I had a knee replacement or I’m about to don’t beat yourself up.

Chances are you didn’t meet a health care professional that knew how to handle this properly and the information wasn’t enough. accessible to you. What you need to do right now is start taking the right steps to fix the root problem, which is usually a muscle imbalance and go check out those videos like I talked about the ACL and the meniscus videos on how to heal and how to test those tissues and heal them without surgery, they’ll tell you more information about what to start to do to fix the problem on your own.

We’ve seen people that have had both a meniscus and an ACL tear. And usually, it’s from a severe injury like a sports injury, somebody fell into them, their knee bent completely backwards, it was probably even nerve damage. In this case, it’s severe. But the more sinister one, the one that you’re likely going to be more worried about is if it happens. slowly over time, make sure you take the right steps, go get a brace, go see a health care professional.

We offer the 28-day knee health and wellness boost program so that you can start to do physical therapy type exercises at home on your own. through video over the internet, you can find out more details about that down in the description. The message that I want to leave you with. That’s super important is don’t wait. If you’ve got an ACL tear or a meniscus tear, you need to deal with its ASAP. start finding out what works for you cut out what doesn’t work for you, you should know pretty quick.

I mean within a day or two, if the exercise you’re trying or the stretch of trying is helping you out. If you do get some short-term relief, good, but it needs to be it needs to continue to improve over time. If you do a stretch or an exercise that just helps you out for a day or two and you keep doing it.

It’s not helping you out anymore. After two or three days. Cut that out, that’s not helping out you should find something that is better and better and better each day so that your knees are healthier in the long run. Well, I hope this video was helpful for you. If you’re looking to hire us to help you solve your ACL or your meniscus tear problem, we’d love to help you out are you going to do is scroll to the bottom of this page here and find the button there that says request a discovery visit.

A discovery visit is a 20-minute appointment with a specialist physical therapist, either in person or over a video call where we can take a look at your knee problem and begin to ask you questions about you want to hear all your story about hiring the problem began and what it’s led up to today. And we can begin to form a diagnosis and a plan to resolve it and whether we’ll let you know we can help you or not right away.

If we can’t, we don’t want to waste your time. Want to make sure to point you in the right direction to the next, the next best person to help you out. But if we can help you will begin to develop a treatment plan. And we’ll invite you to become our patient if it’s right for you. Once you hit that request to discovery visit but at the bottom, you’ll see a form that comes up just leave us your details. And one of my staff will call you back as fast as possible to ask you more questions and see if you qualify for one of our discovery visits. I hope that we can be a part of your success story real soon. Have a wonderful day. Bye