Knee pain in children can be caused by overuse, or an imbalance in muscle strength and inflexibility.
The anatomy of a child’s knee joint is sensitive to problems in alignment and training. Pressure may pull the kneecap sideways out of its groove, causing pain around the kneecap.
A direct blow can also cause knee pain and damage ligaments and tendons, causing an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury or posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injury. These often happen during sports such as netball, football and skiing. ACL or PCL surgery may be required to treat these injuries.
Children can also have knee pain because of a growth-related disease called osteochondritis.
This group of conditions, which causes pain and disability, affects the growing skeleton of a child or adolescent and the surfaces of the joints (cartilage) in the knee. The diseases interrupt the blood supply to a bone which results in bone death (necrosis) and later regrowth of the bone.
Types of osteochondritis include Osgood-Schlatter disease and Sinding-Larsen-Johansson syndrome. In most cases, the treatment for these conditions is rest and painkillers. Surgery is only recommended in a small number of cases.
