Why Most Interventions Fail to Improve Knee Pain
“I’ve been seeing my physiotherapist for months now and my knees haven’t gotten any better. I actually think I’ve gotten worse”
The above quote or variations of it highlight an all too common phenomenon when it comes to addressing knee pain. The phenomena is known as ‘addressing the site, not the cause’ and it is one of the main reasons why a lot of treatment interventions across the board produce lacklustre results.
How does this quote showcase the phenomena?
Well, it starts with what’s known as allopathic medicine. Much of the way we are taught to address issues that present in our modern rehabilitative practice is by addressing the symptoms themselves, trying to treat and suppress them. The general premise of this school of thought is reductionistic in nature, suggesting that there is one particular cause for a certain condition and this should be what is addressed. This works fantastically for certain conditions (e.g. influenza or acute bouts of pain), however, fails to provide long term outcomes for others (e.g. Knee Osteoarthritis). In the case of knee pain, it plays out as seeing a therapist address the site of the pain (the knee), while failing to look at the other factors that might have caused the pain to come about in the first place (hip weakness/ instability, load management, etc.). This site-based approach happens all too often, as a large number of treatment interventions revolve simply around quadriceps strengthening and not much else. Sadly they don’t take into account the litany of other areas that can offer benefits to the experience of knee pain (& are likely causing the pain in the first place).
The efficacy of a more holistic approach was showcased in this recent research review, which showed the benefits regarding quality of life when quadriceps strengthening also included components of hip strengthening.This review showcases a level of thinking that is beyond what is conventionally being done for knee pain. It also shows that recent evidence is supporting the protocols we have installed within our programs for years. We saw that when people also included exercises to address their hip instability, their knees felt drastically better. And that is just one of the things that sets our program apart [See all of the others here].
While the model we explained above is somewhat of a simplistic explanation behind why a lot of conventional modalities produce lacklustre results, it does quite nicely outline what world-class treatment is all about. The thing that separates the truly world-class healthcare providers from the mediocre ones is their ability to dig deeper than the other modalities, in order to find and address the cause of the problem. This often requires a whole lot more effort and intent, however, the result that this approach gets is what makes it worthwhile. And that is what we at MTP have sought to do. We have created a program that aims to be truly world-class by focusing on exactly what we need to do in order to get the best result possible and cover as many bases as we can.