New evidence shows that special hands-on treatment given by trained physical therapists helps ease pain and stiffness in patients with knee osteoarthritis. The manual treatments used by the physical therapists in this study included hands-on tissue work, graded joint movements, and stretching. These treatments have been shown to calm pain and inflammation, help joints move better, and relax muscles.

Which sport and recreational activities are safe for someone who has had total knee replacement surgery? At best, past answers were educated guesses. At worst, a poor guess might end up causing a person to participate in activities that put too much strain on the implant, leading to extra wear or possibly even destruction of the replacement parts.

Most of the tissues in the human body respond to the demands placed on them. For example, the weightlessness of space travel weakens soft tissues. Lifting weights improves muscle tone. Walking and other weight-bearing exercise can improve bone strength. But cartilage in the knees of triathletes doesn't seem to get thicker from their heavy schedules of training and competition.

Oz's tin man needed a heart, and people undergoing anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction need a healthy knee. As long as the meniscus isn't torn and the joint surfaces are in good shape at the time of surgery, this is a reasonable goal. In fact, of the 1231 patients in this study who weren't having problems with the meniscus or articular cartilage, 97% were found to have excellent knee health up to 15 years after their ACL surgery.

Choosing between types of medical treatments requires a careful look at which treatments are most cost-effective. The yardstick to measure whether a treatment is cost-effective has to do with quality of life and the costs to achieve it.

One of the concerns of people with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries is whether they can safely return to high-level sports and activity. With or without surgery, patients generally benefit from standard rehabilitation programs designed to improve knee movement, strength, and ability. In some cases, patients can return to high-level activity. Other patients have pain or unsteadiness in their knee that keeps them from doing demanding sports or activities.

When choosing a protective knee brace, research shows that the make and model may affect the speed and agility of an athlete. Thirty football players dressed in full gear were timed in the 40-yard dash and in a four-cone agility drill. Their scores doing the drills while wearing one of six types of braces were compared to their scores when they didn't wear a brace.

The ability to tell where your joints are positioned or how they are moving is called proprioception. Tiny sensors, called proprioceptors, are located in muscles, ligaments, tendons, and joint capsules. They send signals to the central nervous system to keep you in tune with your body's whereabouts.

Over 40 with a meniscus tear in your knee? Nowadays, doctors will probably choose to repair--rather than remove--your injured tissue. Repair is now possible even when the tear is in the avascular zone, the part of the meniscus without blood supply. In the past, doctors hesitated to do repairs in the avascular zone, for fear that lack of blood would keep it from healing.

Who says you're too old for knee surgery to reconstruct a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)? Doctors Miller and Sullivan recently reported on a rancher who had a successful surgery on his ACL. Nothing new, right? Except that the patient was 84 years old at the time of surgery.

Surgery to reconstruct a torn ACL is usually only done on younger patients. Most doctors consider 40 to be old for an ACL surgery. The authors were unaware of anyone older than 62 having this type of surgery.