Arthritis, Growing Old and Knee Buckling

Knee buckling or the sudden “giving away” of the knee is common in older people, particularly in people with severe knee arthritis or after knee surgery.

It has actually became some sort of a joke that if your knee is already buckling that that is a sign of getting old.

Which may actually be true because the condition has been found to exist in the older population even if they don’t have sever knee arthritis of didn’t have knee surgery.

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine conducted a study in order to identify the factors associated with knee buckling and found the following:

• the condition occurred just as often among men and women
• the condition was more common amongst middle-age and older persons

The researchers recruited 2,351 community-dwelling adults, 36 to 94 years of age who had participated in 2 other population-based studies conducted in Framingham, Massachusetts.

None of the participants had rheumatoid arthritis or had undergone knee replacement surgery.

The team questioned the participants about knee buckling in the past 3 months, knee pain and stiffness in the past month and physical function activities related to lower limbs, such as climbing stairs.

They measured the strength of thigh muscles and also took knee x-rays to check for osteoarthritis and sometimes did magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

They then analysed the data and found that 278 (12%) adults reported at least 1 episode of buckling in the past 3 months; of these, 13% fell during the episode.

The conditions such as knee pain, quadriceps weakness, radiographic osteoarthritis, and limitations of physical function have been found more common among patients with knee buckling than those without knee buckling.

BUT, more than half of those with buckling had no osteoarthritis – making knee buckling not just associated with osteoarthritis.

So knee buckling may just be associated with aging- thereby making climbing of the stairs difficult to the middle-aged and older adults.

Findings of the above study have been reported in an article appearing in the 6th October 2007 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

What exactly does middle-age mean these days? 30s? 40s? Considering that if the average mortality today is age 65 to 75 – mid 30’s is middle age.

So, who said that knee-buckling is a sign of growing old?! 30s isn’t old. Right?

But apparently, you may be in your 30s, but your knee may just buckle. Actually, knee buckling is happening to me but for an entirely different reason.

But that is an totally different story altogether.

SO, how old are you? Does your knee buckle? DO tell.

Source: News-Medical