Effects of Bone Bruise on Patients’ Pain after Acute Knee Trauma

Abstract

Background: Bone bruise is a signal change in marrow that can be the result of edema, bleeding, or trabecular bone fractures. Analysis of the exact location of bone bruise can specify the injury pattern, trace the mechanism of injury, and contribute to a better understanding of the internal structural lesions in knees and concomitant injuries. The current study aimed to find a relationship between occurrence, location, and severity of pain and bone bruise.
Methods: The current analytical case study was conducted on 22 patients with the isolated bone bruise associated with acute traumatic knee. The patients were asked to grade the severity of pain according to the visual analogue scale (VAS) from 1 to 10. To calculate the volume of bone bruise by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the 3 dimensional vectors A × B × C were used. The image analysis software was employed to determine the intensity of bone bruise in the coronal plane in pixel, and the scale of severity of pain was analyzed statistically by the location of bone bruise.
Results: The mean pain scores among male (n = 20) and female (n = 2) patients were 4.40 ± 1.56 and 7 ± 2.82, respectively. The statistical tests showed no significant relationship between the age of patients and severity of pain (P < 0.05). The results of the current study showed no significant relationship between the location of bone bruise and that of severe pain. The average of bone bruise volume in the patients was 8.12 ± 8.77 cm2 and the mean score of pain was 4.63 ± 1.78, having a significant relationship with each other. In addition, the mean severity score of bone bruise was 42.47 ± 176.40 pixels and the mean pain score was 4.63 ± 1.78, having a significant correlation with each other (P = 0.03, r = 0.8). The tests showed that the severity of pain increased by increasing the intensity of bone bruise.
Conclusions: According to the findings of the present study, the severity of acute bone edema had the highest effect on increasing the severity of pain.