Does physical therapy help with knee pain?

Millions of people, especially older adults, suffer from severe knee pain. Nevertheless, it affects people of all ages. Knee pain can be caused by several factors, like it may be a result of an injury for example ripped cartilage or broken ligament. On the other hand, medical conditions like gout, infections, and arthritis can also cause your knee to suffer. Since your knee helps with balancing your body, it puts immense pressure on the joints. And when the knee is injured, or you have any medical condition, the pressure doubles, causing pain during movement.

While the doctor can prescribe knee pain treatment with over the counter medications and proper rest, physical therapy is considered the best option as it allows your knee to recover by doing regular movements. So, what is physical therapy’s role in addressing knee pain? Let’s find out.

How physical therapy helps with knee pain?

Physical therapy is a non-invasive medical discipline that helps people maintain, develop, and restore maximum physical function and body movement. It can help you recover from injuries, deal with chronic conditions, prevent future injury, and relieve pain. Physical therapy can be applied at any stage of life. The primary goal of physical therapy is to improve your health, and ultimately, your quality of life.

Physical therapy is the most recommended and probably the best treatment for knee pain. Under physical therapy, a certified physical therapist assesses your acute knee pain symptom by examining your knee’s strength and range of motion, checking your functional abilities and balance (like stair climbing and walking), asking you your goals, and then coming up with a personalized knee pain treatment plan to relieve pain and restore mobility.

Based on the severity of your knee pain, your knee pain doctor may include the following physical therapy treatments:

• Joint stabilization and mobilization
• Gait training
• Balance training
• Piriformis syndrome
• Strengthening
• Stretching

Apart from physical interventions, your physical therapy program for knee pain management may also include athletic taping, electrical stimulation, ultrasound, and ice and heat therapy. Your physical therapist can recommend you to use assistive devices and accessories that provide support to your knees. You will have to take part in a daily home exercise program created by your therapist that is intended to improve and maintain the quality of life beyond medications and therapy sessions.

What are the symptoms of knee pain?

Depending on the cause of the problem, the severity and location of the knee pain may vary. The symptoms you may experience include:

• Inability to fully straighten the knee
• Crunching or popping noises
• Instability or weakness in the knee
• Redness and warmth to the touch
• Stiffness and swelling

Depending on your unique medical history and the extent of your knee pain, physical therapy can be very effective. According to studies, issues like mild to moderate osteoarthritis and meniscus tears can be easily improved with physical therapy. And surprisingly, in some cases, it completely avoids the need for surgery. When pain persists well past the surgical recovery period, the explanation is usually elsewhere, as set out in why a knee can still hurt six months after surgery.

Nevertheless, if you must undergo knee surgery, then physical therapy can still be your savior in your road to recovery and healing. Overall, when you get physical therapy will depend on the cause of your pain. If you have surgery, your doctor may suggest at least a couple of weeks of therapy afterward to overcome the complications like pain, difficulty in movement, etc. and help you recover.

What type of knee pain do you have?

If you experience knee pain out of a sudden, it is important to pay a visit to your doctor to determine the type of knee pain you are experiencing. There are primarily three types of knee pain that you may experience. They include acute knee pain, sub-acute knee pain, and chronic knee pain. Identifying which type you have is the first step toward recovery, and pain management practices such as PainTherapyCare Brooklyn NYC are one place that evaluation can happen.

• Acute knee pain is usually the most severe. You may experience it 1 to 7 days after the injury. Physical therapists suggest that you rest your knee and let the injured area heal before performing heavy activities.
• Sub-acute knee pain doesn’t affect immediately. You will experience it 2 to 6 weeks after you have sustained injury. If this is the case, you should work on improving your knee’s movement before it partially or completely jams.
• Chronic knee pain may last for up to 12 weeks, depending on the severity. A certified physician should evaluate chronic knee pain to determine proper care and medications (if needed).

Seeing a pain therapy doctor, such as the PainTherapyCare Brooklyn pain therapy doctors, is the usual way to determine whether physical therapy is needed.

Related: HA knee injections in Brooklyn are a non-surgical, drug-free option for knee osteoarthritis pain.

Frequently asked questions

How long before physical therapy helps knee pain?
Most programs produce some measurable change within four to six weeks, whether in pain, movement or what the knee will tolerate. No change at all by that point is a reason to revisit the diagnosis rather than continue unchanged. Partial progress usually warrants continuing.

Can the wrong exercises make knee pain worse?
Yes. Loading a knee in a way it is not ready for, or strengthening around a problem without addressing what caused it, can aggravate symptoms. Exercise that produces sharp pain, swelling afterward or a sense of giving way should be reviewed rather than pushed through.

Does physical therapy help knee arthritis or only injuries?
Both, though the goal differs. With an injury the aim is restoring what was lost. With arthritis the aim is improving how the joint is loaded and strengthening what supports it, which changes symptoms and function even though the cartilage itself does not regenerate.

What if physical therapy helped but the pain returned?
Recurrence usually points to a driver that was never addressed, such as movement habits, hip or ankle mechanics, or a return to load without maintaining the gains. A re-evaluation looks at what changed during the program and what came back afterward.