A knee replacement can change your life, yet many people who have knee replacement surgery wish they could have avoided needing it altogether. From wanting to spend more years staying active to not feeling like they ever fully recover, there are plenty of good reasons to consider your options for preventing a knee replacement in the future.
So, is it possible to avoid knee replacement surgery? More importantly, can you avoid knee replacement surgery while maintaining an active lifestyle and enjoying the things you love most?
Here we’ll explain what knee replacement is, why it’s so common, and how to delay or prevent the need for knee replacement surgery using specialized physical therapy as a first line of treatment.
Total Knee Replacement: The Basics
Living with constant, debilitating knee pain can make your life a constant challenge. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that severe knee pain and dysfunction is the #1 reason for having a knee replacement done. In fact, nearly one million total knee replacements are done every year in the United States, and that number is projected to double in the next ten years.
Although it’s no silver bullet, most people who have a successful knee replacement report significant pain relief, improved confidence, and the ability to do most of the things they used to.
In today’s fast-paced healthcare world, it’s common for patients to have a knee replacement recommended as a fix-all for chronic knee pain and arthritis. Unfortunately, many people may be recommended to have knee replacement when it’s not actually needed. But before we dive into that, let’s talk about what makes knee replacements so common.
Why Are Knee Replacements So Common?
While a knee replacement might be tempting as a quick fix for your chronic knee pain, it’s important to remember that knee replacements should be a last resort for treating your knee pain and dysfunction.
The most common reason for a total joint replacement is gradual wear on your knee joint that leads to cartilage thinning. Over time, this thinning of the cartilage leads to progressive osteoarthritis. While many people have arthritis and no pain, advanced osteoarthritis causes bone-on-bone contact that is very painful and can stop your knee from functioning normally.
The question so few people ask is why do some people have so much more cartilage thinning – which leads to arthritis and a higher chance of knee replacement – than other people?
The first big players in faster knee joint wear are strength imbalances and faulty movement patterns. Your joints are designed to absorb stress and handle high-impact activity throughout your life, but when your muscles aren’t all doing their fair share, or when you start developing bad movement habits, your knee joint will take on more stress than it can handle and cartilage will thin faster than normal.
Another major reason for excessive knee stress is weakness or stiffness of your hip, ankle, or knee itself. When any of the joints in your lower body aren’t moving normally, your knee joint is more likely to take increased stress during each step, squat, or heavy lift throughout your day. This is harmless in small amounts, but can wreak havoc over the course of years or decades, ultimately leading to premature cartilage thinning and advanced arthritis.
While advanced cartilage thinning and arthritis of your knee used to be considered “normal wear and tear” that was just part of aging for most people, we now know that these problems – and even the need for knee replacement later in life – may be avoided with the right plan of action.
Avoiding Knee Replacement with Physical Therapy
Knee pain and dysfunction can be miserable to live with, which is why knee replacements are so common later in life. However, starting physical therapy for your knee health early can mean avoiding the need for a knee replacement altogether. Here’s how it’s done:
Movement Training
Staying active is a great defense against early knee wear and arthritis. However, you’ll want to make sure that the way you move during daily routines, exercise, and sports isn’t putting undue stress on your knees. Contrary to popular belief, physical therapy in itself is not the solution to avoiding knee replacements.
Movement training is a specialized physical therapy approach that focuses on correcting movement patterns in the brain that are leading to excess stress on your knee joints. Using a combination of treatments that help your body move better and reduce the stress on your knees during activity, movement training means healthier knees and a lower risk of needing knee replacement later in life.
Setting it apart from so many cookie cutter knee pain programs advertised today, movement training from a specialist is not a one-size-fits-all treatment approach. From day one, everything from your health history to your body mechanics is assessed and integrated into a comprehensive treatment plan with your long-term knee health at the center.
At The Doctors of Physical Therapy (DPT), our knee pain specialists use movement training as a primary treatment for reducing knee stress, improving knee health, and helping you avoid potentially unnecessary knee replacement surgery.
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Targeted Exercise
Joint stress can be good or bad depending on a variety of factors. When done right, exercise is a type of good stress that can help strengthen your knee joint and structures that support it. Valuable exercise for your knee can be as simple as a hamstring stretch or as complicated as a pistol squat.
Where most generic physical therapy plans go wrong with exercise is that they focus on the same goals for everyone, every time. Rather than giving you the same treatment as the next person with knee concerns, trained knee health specialists know the importance of finding the root causes of your knee dysfunction and then focusing your exercise efforts where it matters most.
A physical therapist who specializes in knee health can show you what exercises are best for your knee health, teach you how to do them safely, and help you stay consistent to get the best results possible. When done right, a good exercise plan from a knee pain specialist at DPT means less knee pain and more freedom to do what you love.
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Self-Care
You might only think of things like booking a massage or taking a day off of work as self-care, but there’s a wide variety of other self-care areas you can focus on to improve and maintain your knee health long-term. For example, paying attention to your body weight, changing positions throughout the day, and investing in the right shoes for your feet.
Of course, the most important self-care activities to put energy into will vary from person to person, which is why you’ll want the help of an expert when building your self-care plan. Each knee specialist at DPT is trained to evaluate your needs on an individual basis to help optimize your self-care routine and get results for your knee health.
How DPT is Helping People Avoid Knee Replacement Surgery
Avoiding knee surgery is a process that starts years before surgery is needed – in other words, right now! Knowing where to go for the right treatment, guidance, and support is pivotal for your success.
Our knee health specialists at DPT are experts and leaders in the treatment of knee pain and other conditions that most commonly lead to eventual knee replacement. Having helped thousands of people recover from their knee conditions and avoid surgery, you can confidently lean on our team to get you on the best path to sustainable knee health.
In addition to state-of-the-art, evidence-based treatments like targeted exercises for knee health, our team focuses on finding the root cause of your movement patterns to promote neuroplastic change and improve how your brain moves your body. With the right movement mindset, you’ll be able to reduce the stress and wear on your knee joint in the years to come.
If your goal is to keep up with a demanding lifestyle, we’ve got you covered. Staying active long term and optimizing your performance shouldn’t be traded for knee health, but an important and evergreen part of it. With the help of our movement and sport experts, you can keep performing your best without compromising on your knee health in the future.
Ready to learn more about how DPT specialists can help you avoid knee replacement? Schedule a call with one of our experts to learn more!
