For patients with knee osteoarthritis, aerobic activities such as walking, cycling, or swimming are likely to be the best exercise for improving pain, function, gait performance, and quality of life, finds a study published by The BMJ today.
If you have knee pain or other knee problems, your physical therapist may pay close attention to your hips and the strength of your hip muscles. Why? Because your hip muscles, like the gluteus medius, control the position of your knees when you are walking, running, or jumping.
The purpose of this review was to assess the use of lower-limb wearable sensors in monitoring total hip arthroplasty (THA) or total knee arthroplasty (TKA) recovery. Outpatient postoperative assessment routinely focuses on patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), which can be limited by ceiling effects and subjective reporting. Wearable sensors provide objective, real-time, remote data, enabling recovery tracking, rehabilitation protocol adjustments, and patient exercise adherence. Lower-limb sensors are particularly useful, as close proximity allows monitoring of clinical outcomes specific to the affected joint.
Gait analysis and pain measures show that subtly adjusting the angle of the foot during walking may reduce knee pain caused by osteoarthritis. This approach may also slow progression of the condition, an incurable disease in which the cartilage cushion inside a joint breaks down.
Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a common and often debilitating condition that affects millions of older adults, causing pain and stiffening of the knee joint. In the new study, researchers examined the current evidence on non-drug therapies for treating KOA. They looked at data from 139 clinical trials involving nearly 10,000 people to compare 12 different non-drug treatments. These included laser therapy, electrical stimulation, braces, insoles, kinesiology tape, water-based therapy, exercise, and ultrasound.
