Your knee is very injury prone, especially as you age. The majority of my patients I see that are 45 years old or older have some kind of knee pain. The most common knee pain is usually because of arthritis within the knee joint. But the knee is a complicated joint and has several ligament attachments, like your MCL, your LCL, and your ACL. So, you can also have a lot of ligament injuries, too. A lot of patients I see have frequent knee pain. Patients come in, and they are telling me I can’t walk anymore. I used to love to run, and now I can’t run. They’re just sitting at home getting depressed, not feeling good. A lot of my younger generation patients tell me they can’t play their sports, and that’s their whole life to them. You want to run. You want to go play sports. You want to go play football. You want to go do all of the activities that you love. And when you have debilitating knee pain, that’s been taken away from you.
So, if you see an orthopedist or another medical provider, and they immediately say, “Oh, we can just inject some cortisone in there.” Be wary! For patients that are 20 or 30 years old, you’ll feel immediate results from a cortisone injection. But six months later, “Oh, I need another shot, doc. I need another shot.” Another six months later, you have the same need. Soon you need that cortisone shot every three months or even after one month. Why is the shot not working? Because the cortisone can only provide temporary relief. 1 That’s when patients hear, “Oh, well, now you need a knee replacement. You need to replace your knee.” How crazy does that sound? But this is the pattern we see in patients coming in our door.
So, one of the things I like to do is use regenerative medicine to heal what’s going on with the knee. Usually, when you need a knee replacement, it’s because they said your cartilage is bone on bone. Now, a lot of times, you aren’t really bone on bone. In some severe cases, you may be, but for the most part, a lot of my patients respond to these regenerative therapies. So, I always tell my patients, “Try. You never know what can happen. You may be out of pain, you may be perfectly fine, and you avoided surgery.”
And a lot of times I see that even after a knee replacement, the patient’s still in pain and they still can’t do what they wanted to do. Or their surgeon tells them, “Yeah, you can do anything with your knee; just don’t run.” The whole point was you wanted to run again. So, what was the entire point of everything? What I offer here at my practice are regenerative injections. PRP injections in the knee have shown in studies to provide significant improvement even 12 months post-injection.2 It can all come down to one little thing as knee pain that’s slowing you down, that’s not helping you.
Now, after a treatment with us, say it’s around six weeks recovery time with studies showing no adverse complications3. Compare that with surgery which can be up to a year before you figure out how to walk with that new knee. Then your other knee starts bothering you because there’s something in your other knee. So, I’m here to regenerate your knee, make you happy, be able to go run with your kids, be able to go play baseball and just be able to walk as simple as going to the store without having to think about it. That’s what we’re here for, to get you feeling better.
Read this article on PRP Knee Osteoarthritis by JOS Review Research
**This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with a healthcare professional before starting any treatment. Individual results may vary based on health conditions and other factors.
Footnotes
- Godwin, M., & Dawes, M. (2004). Intra-articular steroid injections for painful knees. Systematic review with meta-analysis. Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien, 50, 241–248.
- Meheux, Carlos J., et al. “Efficacy of Intra-Articular Platelet-Rich Plasma Injections in Knee Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Review.” Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopic & Related Surgery, vol. 32, no. 3, 2016, pp. 495–505., doi:10.1016/j.arthro.2015.08.005.
- Sit, Regina Wing Shan, et al. “Intra-Articular and Extra-Articular Platelet-Rich Plasma Injections for Knee Osteoarthritis: A 26-Week, Single-Arm, Pilot Feasibility Study.” The Knee, vol. 26, no. 5, 2019, pp. 1032–1040., doi:10.1016/j.knee.2019.06.018.