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A Real Pain in the Knee
Osgood-Schlatters in Young Athletes
By Kelly Burgess
We all like to encourage our children, particularly our adolescent children, to get out and get involved in sports. There's no doubt that athletics teach teamwork, help keep kids fit and keep them busy. However, the downside is that sometimes a child's growing skeleton can't quite keep up with the demands placed on it by the sport.
More and more doctors are reporting instances of knee pain in young athletes, most commonly ages 9 to 14. This condition, called Osgood-Schlatters after the doctors who discovered it, is highly treatable, but can be very uncomfortable while it is active.
Thirty years ago, these pains were often dismissed as just "growing pains," says Terry Robinson, owner of Grapevine Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine in Grapevine, Texas. However, in today's more competitive world of school sports, pain that limits activities can become a real problem. This is when kids, parents and coaches begin to search for ways to treat the condition while keeping the athlete on the field.
According to Dr. Hank D. Bratt of Children's Orthopedic Specialists in Tucson, Ariz., what happens is simply that the tendons can't keep up with bone growth, because at this age bones grow so quickly. As a result, the tendon gets stretched too often, and pain results.
"This can happen to any part of the body where you have a major tendon attaching to a growing bone, but when it occurs in the knee, we call it Osgood-Schlatters," says Dr. Bratt.
The primary symptom of Osgood-Schlatters is pain during exercise and when you touch the affected area under the kneecap. The pain tends to get better with rest. Other symptoms are swelling below the kneecap or a bony protrusion in the same area and weakness in the quadriceps.
Kyle Edmiston, 15, had Osgood-Schlatters so severely a couple of years ago that his mother, Autumn, can still feel the bony protrusions – and he still has a limited range of motion. "He'll never play football, that's for sure," Autumn says, laughing. "He could never crouch down with the other players."
