Helping Your Doctor Come Up With Accurate Foot Pain Diagnosis and Knee Pain Diagnosis

If you ask your doctor, it’s not that easy to make a foot pain diagnosis or a knee pain diagnosis. Foot pain and knee pain can be a sign of several diseases so coming up with a diagnosis is difficult. When you are experiencing such, you need to help your doctor in every way that you can such that a diagnosis can be made immediately so that there will be no delays in the treatment. Here are some of the things that you should be prepared to discuss with your doctor.

Pain Characteristics

The specific location of where you ache is necessary when coming up with a foot pain diagnosis or a knee pain diagnosis. Indicate to your doctor where you feel the pain, where it first started and if there have been any changes in the pain location. You should also tell how it feels like, is it stabbing, pricking, or burning? Is it localized in just one area or does it radiate to the other parts of your legs? Describe also if it is mild, moderate or severe. You will usually be asked to rate the pain based on a scale, usually from 1-10. You also need to indicate if there are certain positions when it is relieved or worsened such as when you do certain activities.

Medical History

A doctor’s questions during assessment may seem to be endless and it can surely be annoying especially if you are in a hurry. However, these questions are definitely needed so that he can come up with the correct diagnosis for your foot or leg pain. During your visit, you will be asked about your medical history. This would pertain to the events before you started to experience the foot pain or leg pain. You will be asked about what you were doing when it started or if you had any accidents prior to your condition. Also, you will be questioned if you have certain illnesses such as muscular or neurological disorders, your history of past illnesses or family history that can be related to what you are suffering from. You have to be honest and patient when you are being questioned with these things even if they may appear as nonsense to you.

Medications and Pain Relief

Whenever you feel that a part of your body is hurting, there is a tendency that you will be taking analgesics especially with the number of over-the-counter drugs that are available. These will also be asked from you, if you have taken certain medications for relief. If you have, give the name of the medicine, the dosage and frequency of what you have taken. You also need to tell your doctor about treatment measures that you have done such as hot or cold compresses, massage, acupuncture and other similar treatments.

There are indeed a lot of questions that will be asked from you when you are being assessed by your doctor. What you have to keep in mind is that you have to be honest and you have to tell important details. Remember that these details are necessary for an accurate foot pain diagnosis or knee pain diagnosis.