A dislocated knee occurs when the position of the thighbone relative to the shinbone becomes disrupted at the knee joint. It can happen through trauma to your leg, like from falls, sports injuries, and car accidents.

Dislocated Knee’ Multi-ligament knee injury of the knee is also known or defined as a knee dislocation. If we look at a knee model, from the front, this is your kneecap, your femur or thigh bone, your tibia or shin bone.

The lateral or outside part of the knee, you’ve got the lateral collateral ligament. On the medial on inside part of the knee, is the medial collateral ligament. On the back of the knee you’ve got your posterior cruciate ligament.

And inside the knee, you have the anterior cruciate ligament. Those are the four ligaments that help provide stability to the knee. When you have a multi-ligament knee injury or a knee dislocation, it usually involves a combination of two, but usually three, ligaments being completely ruptured. A local chiropractor may work with your local massage therapist and your local physiotherapist to create the best health or rehabilitation plan for your situation.

This is a significant injury. It usually requires transport to an emergency department. It is associated with nerve injury. It’s also associated with potentially a vascular injury, and therefore, when you have a knee dislocation or a multi ligament injury, you should go or bet transferred to the emergency department for investigation for those more serious injuries involving your nerves or the vessels around the knee joint.

Treatment for a multi-ligament or knee dislocation usually requires a period of hospitalization and stabilization of the knee with knee bracing. It may require acute surgical intervention to repair and reconstruct all the ligaments involved.

It may require vascular surgery to repair any vascular injury, or nerve surgery to potentially repair a major nerve injury that can be associated with this type of injury. If you don’t require surgery immediately, you will be discharged from hospital in a stabilizing knee brace. 

You will likely need physiotherapy initially. Once you get through the acute phase of this sort of injury, and one that didn’t require surgery initially, you will likely require surgery at a later date to reconstruct those ligaments on a more elective basis. And this will involve tendon grafts or donated tendon grafts to reconstruct the multiple ligaments involved. Often seeing a local family physician or a physiotherapist in conjunction with a registered dietitian and athletic therapist is a great option to take control of this condition. Smart Food Now and exercise is also optominal for overall health.    

If you suffered a multi ligament knee injury or have questions about this sort of injury, seek consultation with your family doctor or get a referral to an orthopedic surgeon.

Presenter: Dr. Jordan Leith, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Burnaby, BC

MRI can give you the most detailed and specific diagnosis of your sports injury to facilitate management and treatment. It gives exquisite detail for the soft tissue injury, and not only the tendons and the ligaments but just general soft tissue injuries.

It's so important to know exactly what you've injured in order to decide what sort of treatment you'll be needing as far as whether physiotherapy and rehab is enough. Sometimes the injury is so severe that patients will need surgery for it and you don't want to delay surgery.

If you have any further questions about whether MRI is helpful for you or necessary for your type of injury you can talk to your family doctor, referring physician, or any imaging facility. Presenter: Dr. Audrey Spielmann, Radiologist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Radiologist