The Top Fort Wayne Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the chance 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 familiar condition around the world. Aaron Chiropractic Clinic encourages our Fort Wayne chiropractic knee pain patients to exercise. We know 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 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 giving rise to disability and other health problems impacting 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 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 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 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 rules. For osteoarthritis, one of the main 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 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 worthwhile. 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 uncovered from the 72 studies they analyzed was that a rise in flexion was linked to decreased 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 become more available 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 improve 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 didn’t prove to be better than 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 Aaron Chiropractic Clinic
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 helpful, relieving treatment approach to include along with exercise!
Schedule your Fort Wayne 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 your knee.
