The Top Fort Wayne Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the probability that you experience or will experience knee pain or know someone who suffers with knee pain is above average. Knee pain due to osteoarthritis is a shared condition around the world. Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc 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 studies tout a few new treatment methods to try, too.
OSTEOARTHRITIS
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease of degenerated cartilage or wear and tear harm to cartilage resulting in disability and other health problems impacting over 500 million adults around the world. 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 reduce joint pain. Surgery (arthroscopy and joint replacement therapy) was explained to be a last treatment option. The authors of this report highlighted that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were advisable and essential. (1) Those are wished for 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 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 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 underwent 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 found from the 72 studies they analyzed was that an increase in flexion was associated with lessened pain and improved 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 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 after treatments, the PRP did not improve 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 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 enhance function. (4) Certainly, more studies will continue to reveal the impact of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc
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 incorporate with exercise!
Make your Fort Wayne chiropractic appointment soon. From what we read, it seems 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.
