The Top St Peters Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the chance that you experience or will experience knee pain or know someone suffering with knee pain is above average. Knee pain due to osteoarthritis is a common condition around the world. Old Mill Chiropractic promotes exercise to our our St Peters chiropractic knee pain patients. We know 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 approaches 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 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 goal of treatment of OA is management and decrease 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 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 desirous goals.
DESIRED RESULTS OF TREATMENT FOR KNEE OA
How do you determine if an intervention is helpful to your pain? Your desired outcome rules. For osteoarthritis, one of the bigger 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 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 of value. 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 examined was that a rise 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 grown in availability 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 improve 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 added cost to the combined treatment, it did not show itself to be better than 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 reveal the efficacy of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Old Mill 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 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 St Peters chiropractic appointment now. 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.
