The Top Tonawanda Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the likelihood that you experience or will experience knee pain or know someone suffering with knee pain is high. Knee pain caused by osteoarthritis is a shared condition around the world. Chiropractic Spine Sports And Rehabilitation encourages our Tonawanda chiropractic knee pain patients to exercise. We know we come across sounding like a broken record on 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 harm to cartilage resulting in disability and other health problems affecting over 500 million adults around the world. Knee OA and Hip OA are the leading types with knee OA being the most common. The goal of treatment of OA is management and decrease of symptoms, not cure. Drug approaches consist of NSAIDs while non-drug approaches incorporate 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 explained to be a last treatment option. The authors of this paper concluded that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were advisable and necessary. (1) Those are hopeful goals.
DESIRED RESULTS OF TREATMENT FOR KNEE OA
How do you determine if an intervention is of value to your condition? Your hoped for outcome is the most important. For osteoarthritis, one of the major diseases that disables us humans, walking for pleasure was documented by data collected for the Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) to be statistically significant for addressing knee osteoarthritis at the genetic level. (2) Today’s researchers are also working to define 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 of value. For patients with osteoarthritis who went through non-surgical treatments, the amount of knee flexion they could perform after treatment was from 3.8 to 6.4 degrees. Other interesting information researchers found from the 72 studies they analyzed was that an increase in flexion was associated with lessened pain and improved function. (3) These are positive findings!
…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 combos 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 after treatments, the PRP didn’t change 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 ended their paper with the statement that exercise alone was recommended to decrease pain and enhance function. (4) Certainly, more studies will continue to reveal the efficacy of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Chiropractic Spine Sports And Rehabilitation
Listen to this PODCAST on Osteoarthritis of the Knee with Dr. Luigi Albano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he shares the effectiveness of the gentle, adapted protocols of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management in treating the osteoarthritic knee! A helpful, relieving treatment approach to incorporate with exercise!
Schedule your Tonawanda chiropractic appointment soon. From what we read, it looks like exercise is still ‘king’ when managing osteoarthritis of the knee. We can help you find the right exercises and even incorporate some distraction to help your knee.
