Type of joint pain | Joint Pain

Type of joint pain

Joint pain can differ in its type and course. First of all, three groups of joint pain can be roughly distinguished according to their course.

  • The first group consists of acute pain characterized by a sudden onset.

    They begin within hours.

  • The second group is chronic pain, which is characterized by a slow and gradual onset. Mostly they manifest themselves only after weeks or months.
  • The last group are the subacute pains that appear after a few days. The course of the pain can be chronic progressive, i.e. the pain progresses with time and is always present, or acute-remitting. An acute-remitting course is characterized by pain-free intervals. Depending on how many joints are affected, a distinction is made between monoarticular (only one joint is affected), oligoarticular (two to four joints are affected) or polyarticular (more than four joints are affected) joint pain.

Localization of joint pain

Joint pain in the fingers can have various causes. They can be degenerative (due to wear and tear) or due to inflammation (arthritis). A common inflammatory cause of finger joint pain is rheumatoid arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis occurs mainly at the base and middle joints of the finger and at the wrist, but not at the end joints of the finger. Usually many joints on both hands are affected at the same time. The pain also occurs at rest and improves with movement.

Especially in the morning there is also stiffness in the joints. In psoriasis, joint pain can occur mainly in the finger and toe end and middle joints and in the spine. The pain does not necessarily correlate with the appearance of the rash typical of psoriasis.

Swelling often occurs along a whole finger.This is referred to as “sausage fingers” in reference to its appearance. The degenerative damage to a joint is called arthrosis. Arthrosis occurs in the fingers, especially at the end joints of the fingers.

In contrast to rheumatoid arthritis, the pain is worse during movement and does not occur at rest. There is no relevant morning stiffness and heat helps better than cold. Acute knee pain is often caused by trauma.

The trauma can lead to ligament injuries or meniscus and cartilage damage. One of the most common sports injuries to the knee is a torn anterior cruciate ligament. Chronic knee pain, which gets worse especially under stress, is often caused by arthrosis of the knee joint (gonarthrosis).

The wear and tear of the cartilage over the years not only causes pain, but also restricts movement. Reactive arthritis occurs up to six weeks after a bacterial infection of the intestine or the urinary tract and heals spontaneously in the majority of cases. If, in addition to the joints of the lower extremity, the urethra and conjunctiva are also inflamed, this is known as Reiter’s syndrome.

Rheumatoid arthritis can also affect larger joints, such as the knee. Furthermore, metabolic diseases such as iron storage disease (hemochromatosis), hemophilia or pseudo-gout can also manifest themselves in knee joint pain. Knee joint pain can also be a symptom of Lyme disease.

In children, knee pain is often due to a problem in the hip, which is projected onto the knee. However, adults suffering from hip arthrosis can also be primarily conspicuous by knee pain. Shoulder pain is often not due to a disease of the joint, such as osteoarthritis, but can also be a sign of tendon calcification, bursitis or torn tendon.

Shoulder arthrosis typically manifests itself through pain when working above the head level or when throwing. The pain is often located in the armpit. In the case of arthrosis of the acromioclavicular joint, on the other hand, the pain is mainly located on the acromion.

A frequent cause of shoulder pain is a bottleneck syndrome (= impingement). In this syndrome, muscle tendons are painfully trapped inside the shoulder joint. A narrowing of the joint can be caused by various factors, such as inflammation of the bursa or a bone spur.

The constriction leads to pain-related restrictions in movement and pain when lying on the affected side. Calcification of the muscle tendons of the shoulder can also lead to progressive pain. If the calcified areas break into the shoulder joint or into bursae, the pain is drastically worsened.

In older people, a rupture of the muscles of the rotator cuff of the shoulder is a common cause of pain under stress and at rest. This rupture is usually degenerative due to wear, but can also occur in younger people as a result of an accident. Pain in the elbow joint can have an inflammatory cause, occur in the context of injuries or be caused by incorrect or excessive load.

Inflammatory causes include rheumatoid arthritis, inflammation of the bursae of the joint or tendon sheath inflammation. Relatively often, however, the pain occurs in the context of tennis or golf elbow (= epicondylitis humeri radialis or ulnaris). This is a chronic strain on the muscle tendons attached to the elbow.

This results in a painful inflammation. Tennis elbow is an irritation of the extensor tendons of the lower arm or hand. In this case, the pressure pain is mainly localized at the outer elbow or the stretching of the hand leads to pain.

The golfer’s arm, on the other hand, mainly affects the flexor tendons and accordingly causes pain on the inside of the elbow, where the tendons of the flexor muscles are located. Tennis and golfers’ elbow owe their name to the fact that the above-mentioned overexertion often occurs in the context of these sports. However, it can also occur in non-athletes.

The decisive factor is the overexertion of the tendons, which can also be caused, for example, by incorrect posture when using a computer mouse. Joint pain in the area of the thumb, which is accompanied by swelling, is often due to rhizarthrosis. Rhizarthrosis affects the thumb saddle joint at the base of the thumb between the metacarpal and carpal bones.

This joint is essential for the holding and gripping function of the thumb/hand. Rhizarthrosis occurs in 10% of women and 1% of men with age and is therefore a very common wear and tear phenomenon.Often there are family clusters. Rhizarthrosis can be treated either conservatively by sparing and taking anti-inflammatory painkillers or surgically by removing the adjacent carpal bone and replacing it with a tendon plastic.

Stiffening of the joint is also an option. If joint pain occurs in various joints of the entire body, this does not indicate degenerative wear and tear of the joints, but rather suggests an inflammatory origin. In this case, the joint pain is often accompanied by swelling, overheating and redness.

Frequently joint pains in the whole body stand in connection with an illness from the rheumatic form circle. Rheumatoid arthritis usually affects mainly the small finger joints, but often also larger joints such as the knee. Another rheumatic-inflammatory disease is ankylosing spondylitis.

It typically affects the joints of the spine, but can also affect all other joints of the body. Arthritis in the context of psoriasis or systemic lupus erythematosus can also lead to joint pain in the whole body. If no inflammatory or degenerative correlates can be found in the affected joints, the complaints may be based on a functional pain syndrome (fibromyalgia). This diagnosis is made on the basis of the clinical signs after excluding organic causes.