There are many different kinds of leg injuries that can affect any part of the leg, from the bones to the joints and the supporting musculature. These injuries can happen easily during everyday activities, but are generally more common when people engage in athletic endeavors. It is also possible to suffer leg injuries from long-term activities, such as performing certain movements in a job every day. Leg injuries can be particularly troublesome because of their tendency to limit a person’s mobility.
Many people consider broken bones to be the most severe leg injuries, but they can actually vary in severity. For example, sometimes people may suffer a hairline crack, and they may not even realize that they’ve broken a bone until they get x-rays. In other cases, a broken bone in the leg may be so severe that one piece of the bone breaks through the skin. Broken bones can happen for a wide variety of reasons, including falls, vehicle accidents, or anything that causes the leg to suffer a punishing blow.
Some people would consider the second most severe kind of leg injury to be a dislocation. A dislocation is when one of the joints breaks apart. In the leg, the joints are the knee, hip and ankle, all of which are occasionally prone to dislocations. These injuries can sometimes be more damaging on a long-term basis than breaks, because it’s very common for people to permanently lose some of their mobility. For example, if someone has her knee dislocated to the point where it bends totally backward, that knee may never operate normally again.
Soft tissue leg injuries are pretty wide-ranging. They could include anything from pulled muscles, to bruises, and damaged ligaments. Bruises are probably the least severe of these injuries, and usually they don’t require any medical treatment. In some severe cases, a bruise may be deep enough that the pain may force someone to visit a doctor for medical advice.
Muscles injuries fall into several different categories. Sometimes people may stretch their muscles a little too far. The same is true for ligaments and tendons. As a general rule, leg injuries involving the muscles will heal faster and more completely than injuries in the tendons or ligaments, which can sometimes be very slow to recover.
