I Have Knee Arthritis - Now What Am I Supposed To Do For Pain Management?

Knee arthritis is a very common problem that affects millions of Americans each year. There are numerous types of problems that lead to be arthritis. The most common would be normal wear and tear arthritis. The problem is the knee is wearing out from lack of cartilage.

The human body does continue to make cartilage just as it did when the person was younger, however the rate at which cartilage is lost increases substantially from where it did as a younger individual. Therefore the ratio of cartilage productions to cartilage loss changes and the end result is less cartilage and arthritis.

Treatments for knee arthritis are termed quality of life treatments. Arthritis is not fatal and surgery is a quality of life decision so nonoperative treatments should be tried first and foremost. One such treatment is activity avoidance, which essentially means if it hurts don't do it. This may include tennis, running, golf, etc. To some people, this may be acceptable.

But in this day and age with Americans desiring to stay very active, probably not acceptable to most. The next treatments are as follows:

1. Cane - A cane may offload over 50% of the weight on the arthritic knee during walking.


2. Pain Medications - These may range from NSAIDS (Aleve, Advil, Ibuprofen) to Tylenol and up to narcotic medications on a short term basis.


3. Knee injections - Injections into the knee range from the usual steroid injections which can be extremely effective to a substance like hyaluronic acid which works fairly well promoting joint lubrication. At a certain extreme of arthritis, the hyaluronic acid injections no longer provide benefit.


4. Physical Therapy - Strengthening the muscles around the joint may offload the joint and provide pain relief.


5. TENS Unit - stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation - may provide pain relief on an as needed basis.


6. Acupuncture - has been shown in numerous research studies to work well for osteoarthritis.


7. Knee Bracing - Can offload the arthritic parts of the knee that are causing pain. This can allow for nonoperative pain relief.


8. Surgery - If all nonoperative treatments fail, knee replacement surgery has been shown to be one of the top quality of life surgeries in the world. There are lesser options too depending on where the arthritis is and whether or not it's focal or diffuse.

None of these treatments actually fix arthritis. They are designed to manage symptoms and avoid surgery.