Physiotherapy is a therapy used to help ease many forms of pain and is able to aid in maintaining movement of joints and muscles. Once your knee joint has been assessed by a physiotherapist they come up with a unique and individualized action plan to do their best to help improve your symptoms. Through this action plan the physiotherapist would be managing pain through various techniques as well as improving muscle strength to reduce the strain on the affected joint. The overall goals of a physiotherapist would be pain management and improvement in fitness levels, flexibility and mobility.

Some pain relief treatments that would be used by a physiotherapist to manage pain would be ice packs or heat packs with IFC (interferential current therapy). The electrical current is felt as a tingling sensation and is helpful with pain management because it interferes with the pain signals that are being transmitted to the brain. Although exercise is important to help strengthen the muscles and mobilize the joints it is important to gradually increase the intensity as you want to pace yourself.

A physiotherapist would be able to create an exercise program for you to mobilize joints and reduce stiffness. Exercises that can help strengthen muscles around the knee such as the quadriceps, hamstrings and calves would be beneficial to reduce the strain on the knee joint during arthritis. There are various hands-on techniques that are used by physiotherapists to increase range of motion of joints and reduce stiffness. Combining these various techniques at different rates throughout your treatment would overall help improve muscle strength, joint stiffness and pain.

Some exercises that are used for knee arthritis:

1. Short Arc Quadriceps Exercise

• Sit with one leg extended and a rolled towel under the knee
• Contract and quadriceps and dorsiflex the ankle to bring your toes closer to you
• Slowly lift your heel and bring it back down and relax

2. Standing Calf Raises

• Begin standing on the ground or the edge of a stool with both legs
• Shift your weight to your toes with the heels coming off the ground
• Slowly bring your heels back to the ground
• Progression: Shift to one-legged raises

3. Seated Leg Extension 10 reps 2 sets

• Begin seated with your feet not in contact with the ground and a hip and knee angle of 90 degrees
• Slowly extend the knee by straightening your leg and squeeze at the end
• Bring the leg slowly and controlled back to the start position
• Progression: Add ankle weights