Knee Osteoarthritis

What are the causes of knee osteoarthritis?

Knee osteoarthritis is caused by many factors such as heavy body weight, congenital knee abnormalities, accidents, aging, etc.

Mechanisms leading to knee osteoarthritis

  1. In the beginning, it starts with the deterioration of the knees’ cartilage bones, making them unable to take the body’s weight. And the synovial fluid inside the knees decreases so patients have some difficulty when moving their legs.
  2. When patients move their knees more with daily activities such as standing, walking or running, the knee bones will rub against each other all the time as the bone membranes are lost. When the bones are clashing for a long time, spurs can occur at the knee joints, making their surface even more uneven.
  3. After spurs occur and the patients still move their joints normally, the spurs will then rub against the surrounding tissues. The patients will feel more pain as the joints get inflamed. The synovial fluid level increases and eventually leads to inflamed knee joints.

         If the patients do not seek treatment immediately, fascia can happen between the tissues and knee joint ligament. If the fascia gets thicker around the joints, the patients will feel stiffness when moving the legs and the affected knee will be bigger than the other.

How can physiotherapy can help?

Physiotherapy treatments focus on pain and inflammation relief at the first stage. The practitioners will use physiotherapy tools such as ultrasound devices and hot compression.

         After the pain is alleviated, they will move to joint mobilization stage to allow patients to bend their knees more easily. Then they will advise techniques to exercise the knee joints. 

Good to know

Knee osteoarthritis cannot be cured as it is a chronic symptom that happens from the body’s deterioration. As a result, exercising is the best choice to slow down the deterioration of joints.

For more information, please contact Rainbow Arokaya.

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