The Top Groton Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the likelihood that you have or will have knee pain or know someone suffering with knee pain is high. Knee pain due to osteoarthritis is a familiar condition around the world. Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office encourages our Groton chiropractic knee pain patients to exercise. We are well aware that we come across sounding 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 methods 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. 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 include exercise (walking), aerobic exercise, weight loss, diet, hot/cold therapy, electrotherapy to enhance muscle strength and decrease 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 advisable and necessary. (1) Those are wished for goals.
DESIRED RESULTS OF TREATMENT FOR KNEE OA
How do you determine if an intervention is of value to your condition? Your desired 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 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 worth it. 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 analyzed was that a rise in flexion was linked to decreased pain and increased function. (3) These are positive outcomes!
…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 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 after 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 did not 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 impact of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office
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 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 include along with exercise!
Schedule your Groton chiropractic appointment today. 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 your knee.
