Journals
These journals reflect my weekly experiences as an athletic training student. Each journal reflects either an actual patient contact experience, or something I am working on in my athletic training courses.
This week I attended time with doctor Hannula. I performed an evaluation on a track athlete this Monday night before Dr. Hannula arrived. Throughout the evaluation this athlete said he had been experiencing a weird lump on the back of his knees for about 8 months. He said they weren’t really painful unless he started running. However, he did not think to come into the clinic because he thought his muscles were just sore. A couple months later he realized they were starting to get bigger and becoming more painful when he was running. So, he finally came into the clinic. When I performed the evaluation, it was very interesting to see these bumps were bilateral. After listening to his history, I realized that this was not from an injury. After observing the athlete bilaterally this bumps were in the exact same spot. But this could only be seen when the athlete is flexing. I palpated the bumps and they both felt hard. He had normal ROM in knee flexion and knee extension. He also had normal functional movement. He reported that he only felt pain when he was running, however, the pain was bearable. I came to the conclusion that it was a cyst, but I was unaware of what kind. I talked with Alex about what I was thinking for the diagnosis of the injury, and he was able to confirm the same diagnosis. He talked with me about the differences between a ganglion cyst and a bakers cyst. Once Dr. Hannula evaluated the athlete, he diagnosed his with a bakers cyst. He explained that since this injury is bilateral, this would be more common than a ganglion cyst. He also explained that this injury could be from any type of swelling that has occurred. There is no medical reasoning for why someone gets a bakers cyst because it could happen from so many things. He explained to the athlete there was nothing he could really do for the injury. He said he could have the athlete come in so he could drain the cysts, but uncertain if that would help solve the problem because there is a likely hood these cysts could come back. The athlete said he would think on it because right now they aren’t bothering him tremendously. This was a very interesting injury to me because I had never seen a cyst before. It was also pretty exciting because this was a bilateral cyst which isn’t common.
1 Comment
BFunk
3/18/2019 06:58:15 am
But what is the most common pathology associated with a Baker's cyst that makes them worrisome when they j"ust appear"?
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Reflective JournalsThese journal entries express my experience as an athletic training student Archives
April 2019
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