The Top La Grande Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the probability that you experience or will experience knee pain or know someone suffering with knee pain is above average. Knee pain due to osteoarthritis is a shared condition around the world. Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC promotes exercise to our our La Grande chiropractic knee pain patients. 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 methods to try, too.
OSTEOARTHRITIS
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease of degenerated cartilage or wear and tear damage to cartilage resulting in disability and other health problems impacting 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 decrease of symptoms, not cure. Drug approaches include NSAIDs while non-drug approaches incorporate 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 emphasized that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were suitable and essential. (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 pain? Your desired outcome rules. For osteoarthritis, one of the foremost 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 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 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 found from the 72 studies they examined 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 grown in availability 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 post treatments, the PRP did not impact pain in mild-to-mode knee OA patients compared to 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 superior to 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 impact of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC
Listen to this PODCAST on Osteoarthritis of the Knee with Dr. Luigi Albano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes the effectiveness of the 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 La Grande chiropractic appointment today. 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.
