Knee Pain Treatment in Malvern, PA
Knee Pain Treatment at Aligned Medical Group
Our unique approach to knee pain at Aligned Medical extends past simply finding where it hurts and providing pain medications. We begin with a detailed examination, so we learn where the pain is coming from, and what caused it to begin with. Knee pain is one of the most common orthopedic complaints, leading to close to one million knee replacements every year in the United States. Most knee replacements are because of arthritis, the wearing away of cartilage over time. Here are some common symptoms with knee pain:
- Swelling
- Stiffness
- Redness
- Weakness
- Popping or Clicking
- Giving Out
- Severe Sharp Pain
- Worsening Pain
- Chronic Pain
How Your Knee Works and Stays Healthy
Knees are simple hinge joints. For the most part, they only move in 2 directions, bending forward and back. Like other joints, your knee allows for movement and strength, where 2 bones meet. The ends of your leg bones, the femur and tibia, are lined with cartilage. Cartilage provides a smooth and cushioned surface so the bones glide nicely upon one another and don’t grind down with weight-bearing activity. Knee joints are surrounded and sealed by a tough connective tissue capsule. There are ligaments that help strengthen the joint, and a meniscus that helps keep the bones from sliding apart. Synovial tissue is also inside the joint, secreting synovial fluid. Synovial fluid is a lubricant that helps reduce friction, so your knee moves easily, minimizing wear and tear on the soft tissues inside.
Something unique about your knees is that inside the sealed joint, you find very high pressure. The high pressure helps keep integrity and strength in the knee, and the bones from grinding too hard on one another. Essentially, the high pressure allows the lubricating synovial fluid to stay between the bones, and minimize the pressure on the bone surfaces, kind of like wearing a compression brace. Like most tissue in our body, knees rely on movement to stay healthy. Movement is especially important with weight-bearing joints like your knees because the knee joint is under such high pressure. Just by walking, the high pressure inside your knees goes up and down, acting like a pumping system to suction in much needed oxygen and nutrients, and pump out waste products and carbon dioxide. If you stop moving your knees, or any joints in your body, the begin to degenerate and break down from the lack of nourishment and exchange of waste products.
Causes of Knee Pain
There are many causes of knee pain and often, there is more than one cause. Here are some diagnoses and simplified causes associated with knee pain. Keep in mind that there are many considerable factors that contribute to causes of knee conditions:
- Dislocation – Caused by weak support structures (muscles, ligaments) and/or trauma
- Ligament Sprain – Caused by trauma or wear and tear over time
- ACL, PCL or MCL injuries – Trauma or sports-related injury
- Arthritis – Caused by a lack of motion or injury causing scar tissue
- Meniscus Tears – Caused by trauma, injury or wear and tear
- Bursitis – Caused by overuse, mechanical imbalances, or arthritis
- Baker’s Cyst – Caused by arthritic change
- Cartilage Loss – Caused by the progression of arthritis, injury, lack of motion
- Muscle Weakness – Caused by inactivity, nerve problems, general health problems
- Instability – Caused by ligament, cartilage or meniscus damage or muscle imbalance
- Patellofemoral Syndrome – Caused by mechanical stress, muscle imbalances
Aligned Medical Group offers a holistic approach to knee pain treatment, which evaluates how the body is functioning “as a whole”, not just one specific area. By surveying a patient’s overall health, as well as noting any injuries or chronic conditions, our medical specialists will be able to pinpoint the cause of your knee pain and outline the best treatment options for you. We offer pain solutions including non-surgical treatments and holistic medicine. Aligned Medical Group aims to provide effective and long-lasting knee pain treatment in Malvern, PA.
Aligned Medical Group’s Knee Pain Treatment Options In Malvern, PA
When outlining a treatment plan for knee pain, our medical specialists take a holistic approach by looking at the patient “as a whole”, rather than just the injured knee. With this perspective, Aligned Medical Group offers a variety of non-invasive and non-surgical knee pain treatments to help rid you of this burden. Some examples of knee pain treatments at Aligned Medical Group are:
- Custom Orthotics: Sometimes the root of knee pain is not the knee itself. The foot is a common culprit. Foot misalignments can result in uneven impact when you are walking or running and wearing shoes that don’t support your feet will exacerbate the issue. A scanner is used to evaluate how your foot moves during walking, creating custom orthotics, ensuring that you have the proper foundation to support your whole body.
- Trigger Point Injections: Trigger point injections are a common knee pain treatment. This treatment relaxes muscles and relieves discomfort by injecting corticosteroids, anesthetic substances, saline solutions or Sarapin (a natural healing substance without side effects) into the affected muscles. Trigger point injections can relieve pain and inflammation quickly and provide long-term relief with recurring injections. Another goal is to reduce knee muscle tension to improve knee mobility.
- Hyaluronic Acid Injections: The joints in our bodies need synovial fluid to move smoothly, much like the Tin Man needs oil. Losing too much synovial fluid results in thinning cartilage and friction between joints that can lead to osteoarthritis and joint degradation. Hyaluronic acid injections for knee pain treatment help by lubricating affected joints to keep them mobile and healthy. Our medical staff do these under ultrasound guidance for exact needle and substance placement. Hyaluronic acid is a natural substance our body makes and when injected, acts like WD-40, lubricating your knees for up to several months.
- Biologic Treatments: Oftentimes, knee pain results from the cartilage and tissue in your knee being damaged and breaking down over time. Biologic products can be used in regeneration-focused treatments to heal or regenerate tissue in the knee. Biologic treatments are safe and natural and are regulated by the FDA under 21 CFR 1271. If your knees are getting close to bone-on-bone arthritis, these treatments are highly effective at supporting the damaged cartilage so it can recover. We’ve helped hundreds of patients get their lives back using biologic treatments even if they were told they had to get knee replacement surgery.
- Chiropractic Care and Treatment: Chiropractic care is very important with knee treatment to balance movement in your knee and improve the motion of your feet, hips and lower back. If your hips are out of alignment, rotating your pelvis and causing one leg to be longer than the other, the stress in your knee increases and becomes imbalanced. If your car alignment is off, your tires wear out faster. So rather than replace your tires more often, your fix your alignment. Make sense?
- Home Exercise Program: Keeping in mind that we need movement with our knee joints to stay healthy, we want to get you moving more, and we want to do it safely with a guided home exercise program. In the beginning it may simply be some easy stretches and light walks, but we’ll build it up to get your knees strong as they heal under our care. We’ll provide easy to follow specific programs with photos of how to perform the stretches and exercises.
- Functional Medicine and Nutrition: This is a very broad and custom area of medicine and begins with testing. First, a detailed exam and discussion about your normal habits. Then we may order one or more diagnostic tests to better understand how we can help you feel better, heal faster, and stay healthy. The tools we use once the testing is complete may include dietary recommendations, natural supplements, medications or even hormone therapies. Visit to learn more about this exciting field of medicine.
- Bracing and Support: We offer a variety of knee braces and support systems. If you have knee weakness, we may offer a brace to compensate for where your weakness is. If there are kneecap pain or tendon issues, we may recommend a strap for under your kneecap to provide support and pain relief. One of our most effective braces is call an Arthritis Unloaded which shifts the pressure in your knee away from areas where the cartilage is thin, providing immediate relief for most people.
- Low-Level Laser Treatment: Low level laser, or Cold Laser, is a form of light which penetrates deeply into your knee from a hand-held device. The photons in the laser light are absorbed into your body, increasing the metabolism in the tissue. When metabolism increases, the healing of the damaged tissue increases. Laser is safe and takes no more than a few minutes to perform one treatment. The application of cold laser also reduce pain levels temporarily.
Each of these diagnoses can affect a patient in different ways, depending on the severity of the case and the overall health of a patient. If you are experiencing pain and looking for knee pain treatment in Malvern, PA, call Aligned Medical Group today to see how our holistic approach can get you back to your best self.
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