TEXAS – Twenty-five of adults over 45 have knee pain. It’s the most common cause of disability in the U.S.
Dr. Alisina Shahi, an orthopedic surgeon from UT Health Houston said a lot of people’s knee pain is starting to feel worse this time of year.
“If you gained five pounds during the holidays, you’re putting 20 more pounds on your knees,” Dr. Shahi explained the pressure on your joints accelerates with every pound gained.
Here are some ways to treat it.
Non-surgical options
Everyone will eventually feel some degree of degenerative change in their joints, according to Dr. Shahi.
To relieve the pain, he said you must be consistent with exercise. You can also try an anti-inflammatory diet and over-the-counter medicines like NSAIDs.
“Consistent, low-impact exercise is the best way to go. Or start with physical therapy to strengthen the muscles around the knee to offload the joints,” he said.
Injections
The next step before jumping to surgery is to try injections in the knee. Steroids, hyaluronic acid, and platelet-rich plasma are all possibilities for knee injections.
“Intra articular injection, meaning that they put some medications in the joint, such as steroids or hyaluronic acid, which have shown that can subside and delay the need for surgery,” Dr. Shahi said.
Surgical options
By the time the knee is bone on bone, pain is almost impossible to reverse and likely needs surgery to replace some or all of the joint.
“During this procedure... we take off the bone that has been affected by arthritis and remove essentially the remnants of the cartilage that is worn down and the bone that has been affected both on the femur and on the tibia and then we recap them with implants that are mainly made of titanium,” Dr. Shahi said.
After knee surgery, he said patients will need physical therapy to walk comfortably, but feeling normal after surgery is possible.
