Knee pain…the likelihood that you experience or will experience knee pain or know someone who
suffers with knee pain is high. Knee pain caused
by osteoarthritis is a familiar condition around
the world. Poulin Chiropractic of Herndon and Ashburn promotes exercise to our our Ashburn
chiropractic knee pain patients. We know we come
across sounding 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 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 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 decline
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 improve
muscle strength and decrease joint pain. Surgery
(arthroscopy and joint replacement therapy) was explained to be
a last treatment option. The authors of this paper emphasized
that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were suitable
and essential. (1) Those are hopeful
goals.
DESIRED RESULTS OF TREATMENT FOR KNEE OA
How do you determine if an intervention is helpful to your condition? Your desired outcome
rules. For osteoarthritis, one of the bigger
diseases that hinders us humans, walking for pleasure was found
by data collected for the Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) to be
statistically significant for addressing 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 see as
making the treatment worthwhile to have undergone. For patients
with osteoarthritis who underwent 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 an increase
in flexion was associated with 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 compared
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 impact 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 added cost to the combined treatment, it did
not 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 improve function. (4) Certainly, more studies will continue
to reveal the impact of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Poulin Chiropractic of Herndon and Ashburn
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 include
along with exercise!
Make your Ashburn 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 the knee.