The Top Plainville Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the chance that you experience or will experience knee pain or know someone suffering with knee pain is high. Knee pain caused by osteoarthritis is a familiar condition around the world. Layden Chiropractic encourages our Plainville chiropractic knee pain patients to exercise. We are well aware that we sound like a broken record when it comes to exercise, but exercise is still ‘king’ when it comes to knee pain care! And other new knee pain studies tout a few new treatment approaches to try, too.
OSTEOARTHRITIS
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease of degenerated cartilage or wear and tear harm to cartilage giving rise to disability and other health problems impacting over 500 million adults around the world. Knee OA and Hip OA are two of the most common types with knee OA being the most common. The objective of treatment of OA is management and reduction 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 improve muscle strength and decrease joint pain. Surgery (arthroscopy and joint replacement therapy) was explained to be a last treatment option. The authors of this report emphasized 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 pain? Your hoped for outcome rules. For osteoarthritis, one of the foremost 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 managing 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 see as making the treatment worthwhile to have undergone. 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 pertinent information researchers found from the 72 studies they examined was that an increase in flexion was linked to lessened pain and increased 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 grown in availability alongside traditional exercise for knee OA pain. A randomized control trial contrasted 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 impact 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 increased cost to the combined treatment, it did not show itself 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 impact of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Layden 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 details 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 incorporate with exercise!
Schedule your Plainville chiropractic appointment today. From what we read, it seems 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.
