MRI Impression & Chronic Knee Pain

[Sam Mack]

26 year old male, 5'10", 188lbs after turkey dinner.

MRI impression, copied and pasted from the report:

"Patellar chondromalacia, probably grade 3.
ACL sprain or partial tear, likely.
Fat pad impingement syndrome, likely.
Interval complete healing of prior osteochondral lesion at the
medial femoral condyle."

I have been dealing with a sharp, jolting pain and loud crunching right at my patella every time I flex my knee while bearing any amount of weight on it. Squatting, deadlifting, power cleaning, and un-racking the press all recreate this sharp pain, as do stairs and hills. My job as an electrician is obviously not helping at all either and these diagnoses have me thinking a career change may be wise.

The sports med doc I'm seeing has recommended 1 month of 500mg of Naproxen twice daily. If that fails then hyaluronic acid injections, which sound like a waste of time to me. If that fails then referral to a surgeon. So they can do what? I'm not sure. Maybe resurface my patellar/trochlear groove cartilage, but if it's truly grade 3 I don't think chondroplasty would help much would it? My hope and dream is that the fat pad impingement is what's actually causing most of my pain, I can talk the doctor into a steroid injection to settle it down (which sounds like the only cure for the issue) and that makes all of the pain go away.

Any advice on dealing with this shit would be greatly appreciated.

Sam

[Mark Rippetoe]

Post a video of your squat.