Engineers are developing an acoustic knee band equipped with microphones and vibration sensors that can listen and measure sounds inside the joint — and could lead to a way to help orthopedic specialists assess damage after an injury and track recovery progress.Hmm. Apparently the listening device on the knee band was created by combining microphones with piezoelectric film, which is very sensitive to vibrations. The microphones are placed against the skin.
Of course all knees make noise: pops, creaks, crackling. Often these are benign. But when you have knee pain, they're called "crepitus" and take on a new significance. It turns out, even if the noises are hard to make sense of, there is at least one message in there:
An injured knee makes markedly different sounds than a normal knee. “It’s more erratic,” according to Omer Inan, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech. “A healthy knee produces a more consistent pattern of noises.”
Inan, in recording the sounds knees make, has encountered challenges. Fluid that surrounds the joint interferes with sound waves, and moving your knees causes its own kind of noise that can drown out other noises that are more important.
As someone who listened hard to his injured knees, I’m interested in what they find. I do think knee sounds are meaningful, but I also think it’s very hard to figure out that meaning.
This is an interesting instrument.it ws very marked in my case cz i neva has any pops or cracks very rarely i heard them,post this injury i did observe and feel crepitus ,lately even ma uninjured knee have started going down the same lane.
ReplyDeleteI hope this machine serves a good purpose and also can incorporated into the treatment regimen
Piezo and microphone, like electro-acoustic guitar. I used to test peoples knees for crepitus and guess what? Every other has crepitus but with no pain at all.
ReplyDeleteMy worse left knee rarely makes any noise at all save for a loud 'clunk' when turning occasionally, but after my knee problem developed, if I sat in a chair with my knees bent, placed my hand gently over my knee cap and rocked my knee from side to side (using momentum generated by my ankles - not my hands!) I could feel 'crepitus.' It was a grinding sensation I could feel through the palms of my hands. I should add that I never do this to my knees anymore because it results in severe pain and swelling a couple of hours afterwards.
ReplyDeleteAmy
richard, when you take your knee rehab walking exercise, you feel pain or slight pain?
ReplyDeleteany knee guard you wear during exercise?
Today I feel no pain of course. I could walk 10 miles and I'd probably have tired feet, but no knee pain. Back when I did have constant knee problems, during my long daily walks I would sometimes feel discomfort in the joint. I tried to keep the sensations of pain/discomfort at a minimum by walking slowly and taking gentler steps (when going downhill).
DeleteMore Dr Scott Dye gold:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGLisqHx8sM
Yes, some time ago I even downloaded, translated that in Bulgarian and sent out to friends who had meniscus surgeries. Interestingly, I showed it also to one PT and a doctor and they were unimpressed. There is something terribly wrong in the medical community when it comes to knees I begin to think.
DeleteThe encouraging thing about this video is that you can have significant structural damage (e.g. torn ACL, or losing a third of your medial meniscus like me) and still achieve asymptomatic homeostasis IF you are careful and patient.
DeleteThe bad thing is the stupid advice most PTs and OSs give you after significant damage. After my meniscus trim I specifically asked the OS what I should now do in terms of exercise and he said "anything you think you can handle". That was really poor advice if Dr Dye's theories are correct (which in my experience I think are correct). I was back on my bike cycling pretty solidly within 6 days of surgery. While I don't think that was the whole story about my demise (in hindsight I think my homeostasis was on a downward track BEFORE I tore my meniscus), it certainly can't have helped my recovery.
The other conundrum is why did I get bilateral loss of homeostasis, and not just in the left knee which had the surgery? Again, I think that is because both knees were already on the edge of implosion, and the surgery just sealed the deal.