A doctor comments on "needless knee replacements"

Dr. Brian Goldman has a show on Canada's CBC radio called "White Coat, Black Art." On this show he talks frankly about controversial things in medicine, as for instance medical error, over-treatment, and junk food in hospitals. In this particular episode he speaks about knee replacements, discussing who is likely to benefit and why, and why people who don't need knee replacements are getting them.

Another study shows arthroscopic knee surgery no better than placebo

In an earlier post I wrote about a study that indicated that arthroscopic knee surgery did not outperform physiotherapy for knee pain caused by a torn meniscus. Now a Finnish study had shown that it did not outperform sham surgery either. Doctors actually performed sham surgeries on patients, making incisions and poking around, but not performing the actual procedure. Patients who received real surgeries and patients who received sham surgeries reported the same degree of improvement a year later. This replicates the results of an earlier (2002) study done in Texas. This makes for a total of four studies that show this surgery to be less than useful.

Before you consider surgery, please try physiotherapy complemented by bioenergy treatments. You will be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Another knee injury helped with bioenergy

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that I teach fitness, and you will also know that when people come to my class injured, I try to help them.

I had someone new turn up in my class yesterday, a woman I will call Ingrid. She was wearing an impressive looking knee brace and she told me as soon as she arrived that she would have to be careful because she had hurt her knee in Zumba class the previous week, aggravating an old ligament injury she had sustained skiing many years ago.

She made it through the class okay, and complimented me on my stretches, which were apparently the same ones her physiotherapist had recommended. Then we got talking in greater detail about her injury, and I offered to treat it.

The upshot was that she went from having a dull pain and swelling on the inside of her knee to no pain and no swelling in a single treatment. When I ran into her the next day, she said her knee was doing great and not hurting at all. She won't be doing Zumba again, though, for at least a little while.