The most common form of arthritis. This is the normal age related arthritis that commonly affects the cartilage lining the joint surfaces as people age. It is most common in the hips, knees and hands. Risk factors include being over 45 years of age, previous injury to a joint, and having a family history of osteoarthritis. In the hips and knee’s people will commonly present with weight bearing pain in the groin or knee and as the condition advances it may impact sleep and cause pain at rest. Physiotherapists will generally be able to make a diagnosis from clinical signs, although X-rays might be useful to confirm this.
International guidelines recommend physiotherapy in the management of knee osteoarthritis. More specifically, in this study physiotherapy consisting of strength training twice a week for 6 weeks resulted in an average pain reduction of 36%, reduced need for pain relief and reduction in perceived need for surgery in patients with hip and knee osteoarthritis (see here).
Furthermore, this large scale program called GLA:D (Good life with osteoarthritis in Denmark) was originally started in Denmark in 2013 and has now been implemented in countries including Australia and Canada (see here). One of their recent published studies demonstrated that in over 28,000 patients with hip and/or knee osteoarthritis a structured treatment program consisting of patient education and 12 supervised exercise sessions delivered over 8 weeks led to improvements in pain intensity, walking speed, and quality of life (see here). Therefore, physiotherapy is a first line and effective treatment option for patients with knee and hip osteoarthritis.
