Do you “suffer” from knee pain?
“Within this new paradigm, overweight and obesity contribute to OA through biomechanical (increased joint load) and inflammatory mechanisms.”
There is newer research that indicates body fat can release inflammation. Think about this, inflammation can cause pain and there has been the old wives tale that being overweight can be the cause of pain, but now there is research to back up the claim that excess body fat can be a factor in having increased pain.
“Years lived with disability due to high body mass index have also increased markedly for males and females aged 15-49 years since 1990, emphasizing the potential contribution of rising obesity levels to global OA (osteoarthritis) burden among younger people”
Being obese takes a toll on health. This is not a surprise. The heavier a person is, the more energy and work required in order to just move. Pair this with increased pain sensation and movement may actually decrease over time.
“Research has shown that the greatest risk factor predicting the development of knee OA in young an middle-aged people is a previous traumatic knee injury”.
If you injure your knee traumatically, the research covers ACL surgeries and meniscus surgeries, then there is a high likelihood of developing knee osteoarthritis.
“Radiographic findings are not well correlated with symptoms and are unlikely to alter the management plan or predict future disease progression”
THIS MAY BE THE MOST IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR PATIENTS TO UNDERSTAND. Just because an X-ray shows “degeneration”, “osteoarthritis”, “joint narrowing”, “bone spurs”…so on and so forth…doesn’t mean that this is causing pain. What we now is that these findings are common as we age. There’s an analogy that these findings are similar to wrinkles on the skin, they are just wrinkles on the inside. Not too many people worry about skin degeneration in the form of wrinkles. The same should hold true regarding some of the results of an X-ray or MRI.
“Overuse of MRI is costly for health systems and may lead to unwarranted surgical intervention.”
The most important part of this is that MRI’s may lead to surgeries that aren’t needed. Let’s go back to the wrinkle analogy. Just because something doesn’t look young and supple…like it does in the textbooks, doesn’t mean that everyone should have a surgery to remove wrinkles. The same holds true for wrinkles on the inside.
“…comprehensive assessment of young patients should include 3 key components: 1. A patient-centered history; 2. Physical examination, including performance-based tests; and 3. Administration of appropriate patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs).”
I challenge this sentence in that it is only limited to young patients. This 3 step process should be performed on every patient, REGARDLESS OF DIAGNOSIS! Every patient should be treated as an individual and not as a diagnosis. Everyone has a different story. Every patient has different needs. Every patient has different goals that are specific to that patient in front of you. The only way that this can be learned by the therapist is by performing a patient-specific evaluation.
The only way that we know if a patient is actually improving, aside from simply asking them, is to perform tests and measures. When your internet isn’t going as fast as we think it should, we can always run an internet speed test. This is an unbiased way to test the thought that it is running slow. We need the same types of tests and measures in physical therapy. These should be performed by your PT within the first 2 visits.
Finally, there is a patient reported outcome. This is a way for the patient to answer questions in order to determine if the patient actually believes that they are better or not. The questions have been validated by some research and the form should be universally known.
“…education about the neurophysiology of chronic pain and contribution of emotional and social factors to the pain experience may be relevant for some patients.”
Many people still believe that an injury happens and therefore there must be pain. It doesn’t quite work this way. The brain can overcome any of those “inputs” that theoretically can cause pain. For instance, we’ve all heard the story of a person performing feats of strength like lifting a car off a child, but few people hear about the injuries that tend to happen after this feat of strength. The brain can overpower the body’s ability to feel pain. On the flip side, the brain can cause pain without injury. This is a little known fact by many PT’s unfortunately. This type of pain requires a completely different type of treatment than someone that is actively experiencing an injury. This is more complex than can be described in this article, but there will be future posts to describe this phenomenon.
“…exercise can reduce pain and improve physical function for knee and hip OA…Muscle strengthening can play a role in managing symptoms…Neuromuscular training programs can address sensorimotor deficits often associated with knee injury, including altered muscle activation patterns, proprioceptive impairment, functional instability, and impaired postural control”
This is a mouthful. To summarize, there is rarely a reason not to “get stronger”. Being strong enables people to do more than being weak. Don’t get me wrong, there are multiple ways to get strong, but there are also multiple ways to get injured while getting strong. Please, if you have little/no experience with strengthening exercises, see a PT or CSCS in order to obtain quality information prior to starting the program.
Neuromuscular training can be replaced by balance activities. This can teach patients how to utilize the “somatosensory system”, which is the communication that takes place between the muscles, bones and brain in order to remain in a certain position.
“…neuromuscular exercises can improve knee cartilage quality (glycosaminoglycan content) in middle-aged adults following partial meniscectomy.”
Every once in a while I learn something new when reading orthopedic research. (just kidding, I am learning every day from the stuff I read). This is a new concept to me. This means that by performing balance training, we can improve the quality of the knee cartilage (meniscus). This is huge because as a health professional, we were always taught that the cartilage has poor blood flow and we can’t really impact healing of this tissue. Who know that balance and exercise were good for you?
“..combining strengthening exercise with exercises aimed at increasing aerobic capacity and flexibility may be the best exercise approach for managing lower-limb OA”
This has been challenged in the research lately. There is an article by Richard Rosedale (JOSPT 2014) that demonstrates that using MDT can provide superior results. The original advice of diet, exercise and balance is probably still the best advice until more research comes out to show that specific exercises are better than others.
Hope this synopsis was helpful. If you are experiencing knee pain or have been told that you have arthritis, there are options. Come see me at FTR in Joliet, now a member of the Goodlife Family.
Dr. Vince Gutierrez, PT, cert. MDT
903 129th Infantry Dr.
Unit 500
Joliet, IL 60435
815-483-2440
QUOTES TAKEN FROM:
Ackerman IN, Kemp JL, Crossley KM, et al. Hip and Knee Osteoarthritis Affects Younger People, Too. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2017;47(2): 67-79.