The Swollen Leg: Reading the Signs
Leg swelling is one of those symptoms that gets normalized quickly. It’s worse by evening, it improves overnight, your shoes have been tighter for a couple of years, and somewhere along the line you stopped mentioning it. But a swollen leg is not one condition. It’s a symptom with a long list of possible causes, and they’re distinguished less by how much the leg is swollen than by a handful of specific, observable features. This article works through those features one at a time. It won’t tell you what you have — only an examination can do that — but it will help you notice the things that actually matter and describe them accurately to a clinician.