The Top Easley Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the chance that you have or will have knee pain or know someone who suffers with knee pain is high. Knee pain caused by osteoarthritis is a shared condition around the world. Young Chiropractic promotes exercise to our our Easley chiropractic knee pain patients. We are well aware that we sound like a broken record when it comes to exercise, but exercise remains ‘king’ when it comes to knee pain care! And other new knee pain research touts a few new treatment methods to try, too.
OSTEOARTHRITIS
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease of degenerated cartilage or wear and tear damage to cartilage resulting in disability and other health problems affecting over 500 million adults around the world. Hip OA and knee OA are two of the most common types with knee OA being the most common. The objective of treatment of OA is management and decline of symptoms, not cure. Drug approaches consist of NSAIDs while non-drug approaches include exercise (walking), aerobic exercise, weight loss, diet, hot/cold therapy, electrotherapy to enhance muscle strength and lessen joint pain. Surgery (arthroscopy and joint replacement therapy) was described as a last treatment option. The authors of this paper emphasized that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were suitable and essential. (1) Those are wished for goals.
DESIRED RESULTS OF TREATMENT FOR KNEE OA
How do you determine if an intervention is helpful to your pain? Your desired outcome is the most important. For osteoarthritis, one of the bigger diseases that hinders us humans, walking for pleasure was documented by data collected for the Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) to be statistically significant for tackling knee osteoarthritis at the genetic level. (2) Today’s researchers are also establishing a definition of just what “minimal clinically important change” is, what the minimum improvement a patient like you would perceive or say made going through the treatment was worth it. For patients with osteoarthritis who went through non-surgical treatments, the amount of knee flexion they could do after treatment was from 3.8 to 6.4 degrees. Other interesting information researchers uncovered from the 72 studies they analyzed was that a rise in flexion was associated with decreased pain and increased function. (3) These are positive outcomes!
…AND WHAT ABOUT PLASMA-RICH PLATELET THERAPY?
In the non-surgical realm of treatment for knee osteoarthritis, platelet rich plasma (PRP) injection has become more available alongside traditional exercise for knee OA pain. A randomized control trial compared three treatment combinations PRP injection alone (three weekly injections), exercise alone (6 weeks program/12 sessions of strengthening and functional exercise), and PRP with exercise. At 24 weeks post treatments, the PRP did not impact pain in mild-to-mode knee OA patients compared to exercise alone. Actually, the exercise alone group outcomes were clinically superior for function and health related quality of life. Even though the PRP increased cost to the combined treatment, it didn’t prove to be superior to exercise alone either. The researchers concluded with the statement that exercise alone was recommended to reduce pain and improve function. (4) Certainly, more studies will continue to document the efficacy of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Young Chiropractic
Listen to this PODCAST on Osteoarthritis of the Knee with Dr. Luigi Albano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes the effective gentle, adapted protocols of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management in treating the osteoarthritic knee! A beneficial, relieving treatment approach to include along with exercise!
Schedule your Easley chiropractic appointment now. From what we read, it seems like exercise is still ‘king’ in dealing with osteoarthritis of the knee. We can help you find the right exercises and even integrate some distraction to help your knee.
