Not sure what counts as urgent and what's an emergency when your child is sick or injured? [Actually, you are looking forward to seeing them again and helping him and his family work through this. There needs to be complete rest of the leg – NO KIDDIN’ – until you and the pediatric surgeon decide on the course of treatment which could include: casting, bracing, physical therapy or surgery of several possible types. The board certified pediatrician on duty had no difficulty diagnosing the boy’s leg pain with the not-common, but not terribly unheard of disorder: Legg-Calvé-Perthes Disease – LCPD or “perthes’ disease” for short. Without adequate blood supply the cartilage and bone of “the ball” which fits into “the socket” of the hip withers away and dies. As we’ve said, nearly all children eventually heal well and can return to activity. If your child has a fever and … No treatment is needed. See a listing of all our Children’s Hospital Colorado locations including inpatient, outpatient, therapy, surgery facilities and more. Something which sets Pediatricians off from other specialties seeing children in their practice, is probably a greater understanding of, and commitment to, being a child advocate through all aspects of their life. Blount’s disease may affect one or both legs. Infections are also known to cause leg pain in children. When to Call for Weakness and Fatigue Call 911 Now. If it was both legs and definitely muscular I'd be feeling a lot more chilled about it. If your child has this common cause of hip pain, they may limp and tell you their hip hurts after sitting for a long time. There is no warmth, erythema (redness), swelling, bruising or visible deformity in either lower limbs – even less things to think of. These pains are muscle aches that can occur in the thighs, behind the knees, or the calves. Once they go away, the muscle returns to normal quickly. A complete physical examination should be performed to loo… Muscle Cramps. For non-life-threatening medical needs when your pediatrician is unavailable, visit one of our urgent care locations. Boys, as most parents know (and despite the political attempts at uni-sexing children), are a lot more likely to inflict injury on themselves due to their general activity preferences. After all that’s why you took the trouble to get board-certified in pediatric and adolescent care, right?]. Some healthcare professionals listed on our website have medical privileges to practice at Children’s Hospital Colorado, but they are community providers. My 6-year-old son Nixon had been complaining of leg pain for the last few weeks, and we had been doing everything we knew to help his growing pains. Main Causes. March is Child Life Month! Learn more about patient ratings and reviews. And, that actually doesn’t make your next step any easier. Ice the area for 20 minutes four times per day during the first 48 hours, but s… The new bone replacement may be so complete and perfect that a reasonable facsimile of a normal bone may result. Learn about our mission and more, or search for opportunities to join our team. It has now been found to be the result of a vascular inadequacy to the actual head of the longest bone in the body, the Femur. Apply ice to the muscle if soreness persists after the cramp subsides. Unlike the symptoms of growing pains, children with toxic synovitis will often experience leg or hip pain in just one leg, and this pain is more constant throughout the day rather than just in the evening. If the soreness and tenderness a boy is having is due to the general “rough and tumbleness” of boys, it will nearly always also be general in nature – i.e. Early surgery is best for some and there’s even a suggestion that bracing can be abandoned in others. It totally depends on the age of the patient (the younger the better), the presence of associated infection, eventual alignment of the involved joint, and other mechanical and physiologic factors. My 3 yr old son has been complaining of leg pain on and off for several months but has become daily for the past month. Affiliated with the University of Colorado School of Medicine. You first ask him to move his right leg through range-of-motion (sneakily trying to find out what is normal for him) then note that the same motions are limited and guarded on the left. A: Leg pain is not uncommon in children… It is common now to see the younger children eventually return to sports activities; and even some children who were older or with more extensive bone compromise as well. Muscle cramps in the feet or calf muscles occur in a third of children. There is always a lot of home-grown innovation and DIY by parents and other care-givers. Most commonly, the growth deformity is found at the top of the tibia, which is the larger of the two bones in the lower leg. A 6-year-old girl presented with a history of leg pain and cramping that progressively worsened over a 2- to 3-week period of time. It all depends on the stage and extent of the problem. Most leg pain … Brief pains (1 to 15 minutes) are often due to muscle spasms (cramps). Cystic adventitial disease is a rare disorder that affects the arteries (and sometimes veins) in the leg or legs. A doctor may refer to this as intermittent leg pain. Primary care physicians must determine whether the pain may be caused by a systemic disease. Dad’s tinker and refine various “contraptions” to solve a multitude of perceived difficulties and make life easier for everyone. Even today we still don’t know exactly what causes this avascular necrosis (disintegration due to lack of vasculature) in about 4 of 100,000 children (one in 1200 children younger than 15 years) mostly between the ages of 4 and 10. The tibia is the largest bone in the lower part of the leg. Other symptoms include limping and reluctance or … • Nondescript pain • Often at the end of the day – may complain at night but usually complaining at bedtime • Usually involves the legs • Usually is bilateral – not always at the same time • We think it is related to muscle, and nerve growth triggered by bone growth • Many children with growing pains are “tight” If you believe your child needs immediate attention and you have concerns for a life-threatening emergency, call 911. In some cases, the first sign of the disease is a broken arm or leg, which happens because the cancer has weakened the bone and made it vulnerable to a break. Whether to use a brace or a cast, at what angles and for how long entirely depends upon the bone. The first thing mom wants to hear is that: “it’s not cancer or a tumor”; so, that’s the first thing you say and pause to let it sink in. Growing pains are usually brief, although recurrent, and often occur in the shins, calves or thighs at night. Leg pain or other musculoskeletal pain which is only one-sided is pretty much expected to be due either to some sort of localized trauma or injury or something internal. (Examples are tight new shoes or a recent shot). Muscle Overuse (Strained Muscles). However, there’s a LOT of things that can cause a limp in a child so you methodically go through them in your mind while you examine his leg. Periodic Leg Pain Some causes of leg pain in a child are not serious and will go away on their own. We need to eliminate hip irritability, restore and maintain good range of motion in the hip, prevent collapse of the bones’ growth centers (epiphysis) and eventually attain a spherical head to the femur when we’re done. “We see Eventually this will resolve in some way, but there is a “long row ahead of them left to hoe.”. Leg length discrepancy (LLD) is an orthopedic problem that usually appears in childhood, in which a child’s two legs are of unequal lengths. Growing pains are a common cause of leg pain in children. In an essay shared with Love What Matters, Nixon’s mother Janessa explains that she initially assumed her son’s leg pain was simply “growing pains.”. For ongoing updates, a list of open locations and how to get care virtually or in person, please see our coronavirus resources for parents and resources for healthcare professionals. Osteomyelitis (bone infection) is a rare and more serious condition. Advertisement by Google(sorry, only few pages have ads). Pain or discomfort anywhere in the leg can range from a dull ache to an intense stabbing sensation. The current leg pain is on the left and DS says it's the top of his shin bone that hurts, though I appreciate it could in fact be the growth plate. He doesn’t have a fever and his vital signs are normal – less things to think of. The pain often peaks on day 2. Excluded: Toe Injury only. How he comes out of it in the end depends upon whether or not they can focus on some good goals of eventually getting back to play and not on “pity” or “crisis management” type aspects of life. It's difficult to locate 'benefactors' for a medical site which don't suggest a conflict of interest of some sort. Because you know you’ve spent the time to obtain a good history and done a good examination you’ve almost narrowed the diagnosis down in your mind. Instead, call your doctor or our free ParentSmart Healthline at 720-777-0123 for guidance. If the quadriceps or hamstrings are strained, rest the leg for the first 48 hours following the injury. Here is some care advice that should help. Eventually the disintegrated bone does fill in with new bone and scar tissue so I guess one could call it a “self-limiting” disease; but, it’s the actual state of that ‘filling in’ which determines how functional and how life-limiting the condition eventually is to the child. [Parenthetically, hip pain increasing in severity should NEVER ever be triaged by a receptionist. For questions about visiting our locations, such as face covering requirements, please see our visitation policies. The younger the child, the better the outcome. The pain can make some children not want to walk. At first it was only at bedtime which I thought could be for attention then he started waking during the night. Back to our limping boy with leg pain – his mother only adds that he’s been normal except for being on the small side of the growth chart. Depending on the age at diagnosis, a child may have the infantile or adolescent type of this disease. Common causes of leg pain. The whole process of disintegrating and re-growing bone, muscle and vasculature is a time consuming process – usually four or five years or more. But, medical devices don’t do it all. It can only be accomplished by keeping the femur abducted (flexed outward at the hip) and internally rotated (toes turned in) for a long time. Several different techniques have been developed to solve different kinds of problems.