The term knee bone bruise is not a proper name, since the knee tissue isn't bone. The effected area is actually the far tip of the upper leg bone ( femur) where it connects to the knee. They are some of the most painful bruises you can get, they can sometimes take months to heal. What happens in a bone bruise is a compressive force pushes the surfaces of the knee joint onto themselves. When this happens the outer cover layer of the bone, which is fibrous tissue, breaks down. This leads to leaking of fluid.Pain and tenderness occurs just like a typical bruise, but a bone bruise will typically locally not swell. It'll be difficult to walk, and there may be discoloration in the area of the knee bone bruise. Pain meds, ice and rest is how you approach these. These can respond from 1 week to weeks to months..... time is very unpredictable but very necessary. Meanwhile, that knee joint needs to avoid immobilization.
Knee fluid buildup for a few weeks is not unusual, but when it lasts as long as DD has shown, you'd be wise to look at other causes. One very worrisome consequence of a severe bone bruise injury is cartilage dies from the crushing trauma and separates from the bone exposing bone...........chronic arthritis.....etc. This is what explains why significant number of ACL injuries do not seem to respond to surgical repair. My greatest worry is that between injury and his "clean out" scope with the reports by the team that he is "thin on cartilage," that DD may be exhibiting the signs and symptoms of arthritis associate with exposed bone surface.
