Joint Pain
Joint pain can range from irritating to severe pain.
Joint pain can range from irritating, as in the inability to use one finger due to pain in a single small joint, to devastating in the context of being unable to walk due to severe hip or knee pain.
You may experience a mechanical type of pain that can be relieved by not moving, or nerve pain that is quite unremitting, never reaches a comfortable state, and interferes with all activities, including sleep.
Understanding Joint Pain
There are a few factors that can increase a person’s likelihood of developing joint pain, including:
- Previous joint injury
- Repetitive use or overuse of a joint
- Osteoarthritis/autoimmune arthritis
- Being overweight
- Age
- Bursitis
The treatments for these pains can be quite different. Occasionally, you may have undergone a joint replacement in an attempt to relieve pain and while usually successful, sometimes this treatment leaves you with continued pain or an entirely new pain in another area.
We have close relationships with our orthopedic colleagues to assist in both the evaluation and treatment of pain relating to your joints, and ranging from the treatment of athletes to the patient who has undergone extensive reconstructive surgery and unfortunately still suffers from persistent pain.
Common Symptoms
Joint pain most commonly affects the hands, feet, hips, knees, shoulders or spine. Some of the most common symptoms of this pain, no matter where it manifests, include:
- Stiffness, achiness, or soreness
- Joint stiffness in the morning that may feel better throughout the day with activity
- A limited ability to perform basic tasks
- Swelling
- Stiff or enlarged joint
- Numbness
- Noisy joints, like clicking, grinding, or snapping sounds during movement
- Pain when moving the joint
- Difficulty bending or straightening the affected joint
- Loss of mobility
- A red, hot, and swollen joint – this symptom should be evaluated by a doctor as soon as possible
