The Top West Des Moines Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the likelihood that you experience or will experience knee pain or know someone suffering with knee pain is high. Knee pain due to osteoarthritis is a shared condition around the world. Executive Chiropractic of Iowa promotes exercise to our our West Des Moines chiropractic knee pain patients. We are well aware that we come across sounding like a broken record on exercise, but exercise remains ‘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 damage to cartilage resulting in 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 decrease 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 described as a last treatment option. The authors of this report concluded that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were advisable and necessary. (1) Those are hopeful goals.
DESIRED RESULTS OF TREATMENT FOR KNEE OA
How do you determine if an intervention is successful to your condition? Your desired outcome is the most important. For osteoarthritis, one of the bigger 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 worth it. 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 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 didn’t change 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 decrease pain and enhance function. (4) Certainly, more studies will continue to reveal the impact of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Executive Chiropractic of Iowa
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 effective gentle, adapted protocols of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management in treating the osteoarthritic knee! A beneficial, relieving treatment approach to incorporate with exercise!
Schedule your West Des Moines chiropractic appointment soon. From what we read, it looks like exercise is still ‘king’ in dealing with osteoarthritis of the knee. We can help you find the right exercises and even incorporate some distraction to help the knee.
