Damaged Knees: How To Determine If It Is Work-Related Or Just Old Age
Posted on: 2 September 2017
Jobs that require you to spend several hours kneeling on hard surfaces may lead to damaged knees. The knees are not meant to kneel on cement, concrete, or any other hard flooring for years at a time. It forces the the connective tissues in your knees to weaken and eventually snap. It also causes the bones and synovial fluid behind your knee caps to grind and decrease respectively. So, if your knees are bad and you need surgery now, how do you determine if this is work-related, or just old age? Here is how.
Amount of Damage
An orthopedic knee specialist would have to take x-rays and scopes of your knees to see how bad they are. If the damage you have is similar to someone one-and-one-half times to two times your age, the damage is probably work-related. If all of the synovial fluid is missing, and your knee bones are developing spurs or grinding heavily against each other, and you are younger than fifty, these signs may also indicate work injuries.
History of Pain and Treatment
A history of when you started to feel pain and seek treatment is also important. If you were already in pain and seeking treatment during the time when you worked for the employer that expected you to kneel regularly to do your job, the knee damage is work-related. It may still be work-related as latent work injury, which means the damage and pain did not appear until a few years after you quite working for that employer. However, having a record of pain and seeking treatment helps your case immensely.
Your Current Age, Weight, and Activity Level
Other factors related to age and lifestyle play a part in bad knees, too. If you hire a personal injury attorney and go to court, your employer may argue that some of these contributing factors were the cause of your bad knees, and not the time spent kneeling for your job.
These factors used against you may include:
- Age (anyone over fifty has some degree of knee damage)
- Weight (obese people always have bad knees because they are carrying too much excess weight)
- Activity level (anyone who runs daily or plays a sport for fun in his/her free time is going to have bad knees)
Of course, your personal injury lawyer can turn some of these factors upside down if they do not apply. For instance, if you are in your late twenties and early thirties, but you have the knees of an octogenarian and you do not play sports nor are you obese, then it becomes quite clear that your job is at fault. If that is the case, contact a personal injury attorney to see if you should be suing for worker's compensation.
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