The Top Largo Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the likelihood that you experience or will experience knee pain or know someone who suffers with knee pain is high. Knee pain due to osteoarthritis is a common condition around the world. Hollstrom & Associates Inc promotes exercise to our our Largo chiropractic knee pain patients. We know we sound like a broken record on exercise, but exercise remains ‘king’ when it comes to knee pain care! And other new knee pain studies tout a few new treatment methods to try, too.
OSTEOARTHRITIS
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease of degenerated cartilage or wear and tear damage to cartilage giving rise to disability and other health problems impacting over 500 million adults around the world. Hip OA and knee OA are the leading types with knee OA being the most common. The goal of treatment of OA is management and decline of symptoms, not cure. Drug approaches include NSAIDs while non-drug approaches include exercise (walking), aerobic exercise, weight loss, diet, hot/cold therapy, electrotherapy to enhance muscle strength and reduce joint pain. Surgery (arthroscopy and joint replacement therapy) was described as a last treatment option. The authors of this report highlighted that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were suitable and essential. (1) Those are desirous goals.
DESIRED RESULTS OF TREATMENT FOR KNEE OA
How do you determine if an intervention is of value to your condition? Your desired outcome is the most important. For osteoarthritis, one of the bigger diseases that disables us humans, walking for pleasure was found by data collected for the Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) to be statistically significant for managing 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 underwent 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 found from the 72 studies they examined was that an increase in flexion was linked to decreased 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 post treatments, the PRP did not change pain in mild-to-mode knee OA patients weighed against exercise alone. Actually, the exercise alone group outcomes were clinically superior for function and health related quality of life. Even though the PRP added cost to the combined treatment, it didn’t prove to be better than exercise alone either. The researchers ended their paper with the statement that exercise alone was recommended to reduce pain and enhance function. (4) Certainly, more studies will continue to document the efficacy of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Hollstrom & Associates Inc
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 helpful, relieving treatment approach to include along with exercise!
Make your Largo chiropractic appointment now. 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 the knee.
