The Top Baton Rouge 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 above average. Knee pain caused by osteoarthritis is a shared condition around the world. Medical Spine and Sports Injury and Rehab Centers promotes exercise to our our Baton Rouge chiropractic knee pain patients. We are well aware that 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 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 affecting over 500 million adults globally. Hip OA and knee OA are two of the most common 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 improve muscle strength and lessen joint pain. Surgery (arthroscopy and joint replacement therapy) was described as a last treatment option. The authors of this report concluded that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were advisable and essential. (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 is the most important. For osteoarthritis, one of the main 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 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 perform after treatment was from 3.8 to 6.4 degrees. Other interesting information researchers uncovered from the 72 studies they analyzed 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 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 didn’t change pain in mild-to-mode knee OA patients weighed against exercise alone. As a matter of fact, 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 show itself to be better than exercise alone either. The researchers ended their paper with the statement that exercise alone was recommended to decrease pain and improve function. (4) Certainly, more studies will continue to document the efficacy of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Medical Spine and Sports Injury and Rehab Centers
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 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!
Make your Baton Rouge chiropractic appointment now. From what we read, it looks 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 the knee.
