What Is A Baker’s Cyst? Swelling Behind The Knee

Do you have swelling on the back of your knee? Have you been told that you might have a baker cyst? Is it getting stiff and especially in the mornings when you get up is it just tough to get going and get moving, and not to mention it looks a little unsightly in the back of your knee. And your concern might be growing about the possibility of you needing some surgery later on for this problem.

If this sounds like you, today’s video is going to be very helpful for you. I’ll be talking about how Baker cysts occur and what the symptoms are and what the common treatments are for Baker cysts. If you’re looking for exercises for Baker’s cysts, we’ll be releasing that real soon here might already be released, you might check in the description here below, we might have LinkedIn. If not, please subscribe so that you don’t miss that video on Baker cysts exercises.

And real quick, my name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso manual physical therapy. This channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile. while avoiding unnecessary surgeries, injections and medications. Please subscribe so you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos that we upload every single week.

So let’s get into it. What is a baker says how does it happen. And I’ve drawn a picture for you here. A Baker cyst. If this is your knee joint right here, the back of the knees right here, the front of the knees right here. Here’s the thigh bone. And here’s the shin bone. There’s your kneecap, there’s your quad muscle. And the blue right here is the cartilage inside your knee.

The green is the joint space with this big green section, the back being a baker cyst that shouldn’t be there. That is abnormal right there. The reason why a baker cyst develops is because there’s some sort of injury happening inside the knee.

Usually, because there’s too much pressures inside the knee joint. There’s a bunch of root problems for that, which I’ve talked about in other videos. And I’ll mention more about here soon, where the cartilage is getting irritated and damaged.

There are root problems that cause that. And as a response, the knee joint develops more fluid than normal to protect the cartilage in there so that it doesn’t get over pressurize from your muscle imbalances and other things that are happening inside the knee joints. And what happens is that fluid only has so much space to go into within the knee joint, there’s only so much green areas that it can go into.

And the weakest point in the we call it the joint capsule, the space that holds the fluid, the weakest point is on the back of the knee, because there’s no kneecap back there and there are muscles but there’s kind of some open space where you need that space in order for nerves and blood vessels to pass through, but it’s softer area in the knee.

So there’s space for the knee joint capsule to bulge outwards, towards the back of the knee. And they call it a baker’s cyst with Dr. William Baker’s a guy who first figured this out and coined this term and so that’s who it’s named after. Another name for this is the popliteal cyst because the popliteal fossa is the another name for the back of the knee.

But like I said, it’s just that fluid that bulges out into the back of the knee. For some people, they get swelling more in the front of the knee. Other people just get a meniscal injury or arthritis that develops. The root problem is the same though there is too much pressure inside the knee joint, likely due to a muscle imbalance.

It’s typically the quads muscles, the quadricep muscles that are too strong, and that pushes the knee joint into itself harder. Usually those glute muscles and hamstring muscles, it could be lower leg muscles also that are weak that are that are causing that that force inside the knee joint to be too much.

Then slowly over time the cells inside the knee joint start to release that fluid to protect itself but that fluid just bulges out backwards. And that causes that that Baker cyst that swelling back there. Now what are the common signs and symptoms, obviously a big sign of this is that swelling on the back of the knee, it can happen on both knees simultaneously.

We do see that happen from time to time, but usually there’s one knee that’s got it way worse than the other. And it’s if you poke it, it’s soft, it can be tender, sometimes it’s not tender, but there’s a notable pooch or a pocket of fluid back there.

That is just blocking you from bending your knee all the way or is just as uncomfortable it can feel like a fullness on the back of your leg especially when you straighten out your leg and just like something that restricts the bending of the knee as well.

It literally feels like you’ve got a water balloon on the back of your leg, a small water balloon that is it might jostle around in some big Baker cysts, but more so it just feels like there’s something back there that doesn’t let you move or perform normally with your leg.

This is often associated with meniscus tears and knee arthritis. So if you’ve been told that you have a meniscus tear, you suspect that you have one or the same thing with arthritis. You’ve been told you have knee arthritis for you or you have been diagnosed From the arthritis, then you’re more likely to get a bigger Cyst.

On top of that meniscus tear or that knee arthritis. In really bad cases when the swelling is excessive, that fluid can begin to drain down into the lower leg and even as far down as the ankle, and it can cause swelling in the entire lower leg.

This tends to get worse the more active individual is, so many people that have a baker cyst tend to not want to go walk more do things because they know that this problem just gets worse over time. When it’s left untreated, it does tend to make arthritis problems worse, it makes meniscus problems worse, it’s hard to save.

It’s the baker cyst itself and the excessive fluid that causes the problem. Or if it’s the lack of motivation to go move and exercise and be on your feet and do the right things to help the arthritis in the meniscus tears. That that causes people to not want to do stuff that leads to weakness that further makes the Arthritis and meniscus problem worse.

That often leads to hip pain and back pain, sometimes ankle pain and foot pain as well. When there’s excess food like they’re right behind the knee, the sciatic nerve runs right back there. And so it can compress the sciatic nerve and cause sciatica type pain as well as heel pain because that same side ik nerve runs down into the bottom of the foot.

Oftentimes people think that they have plantar fasciitis, when in truth, it’s sciatica pain, due to the swelling coming from the baker cyst, there isn’t any other hard signs to look for. I mean, as far as like test to do, it’s just it’s pretty obvious if you’ve got a baker says people can tell you that they’ve got it as a healthcare professional, you can spot it a mile away.

Most people can Google it and look at pictures of other people’s Baker system. They’ll say, Yep, that’s me. If you go to the doctor’s office for this, though, they’ll tell you right away that you’ve got a baker cyst. But what treatment options are out there because honestly, there aren’t very many good ones.

Doctors often are just giving people pain medications, they may be giving them over the counter pain medications if it hurts, or oral pain medications. In some cases, physicians will take a needle in there and drain it and get the fluid out of the baker cyst.

But what we found is in most cases, when that happens, the fluid returns to the cyst again. And that’s because the root problem has not been addressed, there’s still excessive pressure into the knee joint. And the cells inside the joint continue to develop that excessive joint fluids called synovial fluid in order to protect the knee joint itself and it just fills up that pocket again.

Now in some cases, the cyst will burst, at which point the swelling goes down into the leg kind of quick and it stays there, it’s possible that it won’t just stay in the back of the knee, it could just swell into the bottom of the leg. Um, if that’s happened to you, then it can cause a bunch of other problems typically nerve problems, movement problems get worse as well. But it is still helpful.

Now I have not seen any surgeries specifically for Baker cysts, there might be one out there. If you know one comment and let us know we’d like to learn about it. But what we do here in the clinic for people with Baker cysts through our specialized manual physical therapy treatment is we’re looking at the root problem of this.

So in this muscle imbalance that I mentioned earlier in the video, there’s too much pressure from the quads. So typically we’re releasing the quads by hand, making sure the knee joint is aligned, making sure the hip and the foot and ankle are all moving properly so that the forces are distributed normally through the entire leg.

Usually it means getting stronger in certain muscles, glutes and hamstrings are two common ones, we might even need to look at muscles up in the core like the abdominals and back muscles and all the way down into the foot to properly distribute pressures through the entire leg and normalize it at the knees so that those cells quit developing that extra fluid that’s causing that swelling on the back of the knee or into the calf and ankle.

I do have to be honest with you, people with Baker says typically don’t recover 100%, meaning the baker says goes away 100% it will reduce at the very least it tends to stay the same it keeps from getting worse. But most people report that they have less pain and that they have less stiffness in the morning.

They’re better able to do stuff and they have more range of motion to so this is good if you can avoid having some surgery, avoid having to take medications and make sure that you treat the root of the problem.

Even though it may be a little unsightly, which may be draining and will work I have not talked to patients that have had it drained after they’ve gone through our treatment. That’s a possibility out there. But at the very least they’re moving well and then preventing some worst situation from happening like arthritis and meniscus tears.

I hope this video was helpful for you. Please give us a like if it was Don’t forget to subscribe and turn on your notifications and drop a comment if you got a question. We’ll get to it as fast as possible. Thanks so much guys. Have a wonderful day.