Dr. J. Michael Bennett is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Doctor serving patients from Greater Houston through offices in Sugar Land and Houston, near the Houston Galleria. He’s a knee specialist with many years of experience in treating knee injuries. If you’ve experienced a knee injury and you’re interested in knee bracing or if you’re interested in treatment for knee arthritis, please call 281-633-8600 for an appointment.
This is the fifth part of a radio show hosted by Dr. Bennett on 1560 The Game. With Dr. Bennett was Bob Lewis of 1560 The Game and Dr. Stephen Simonich of Katy Orthopedics in Katy, TX.
Click this link to go to the first part of the show and this link to go to the previous portion of the show.
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DR. J. MICHAEL BENNETT – Now I wanted to dive in a little bit about how to avoid knee injuries when playing sports and Dr. Simonich, if you could kind of give your opinion on this. A lot of patients and people come to me and ask me about bracing, they’re like, “Oh man, I’ve got an ACL tear,” we go in and reconstruct it, they’ve got a stable knee, they’ve done their therapy, but they still want the brace. But what I’ve seen – at least the studies have shown – in regards to ACL injury itself, knee bracing does not necessarily prevent an ACL injury. I think it does help in protecting the medial collateral ligament, the lateral collateral ligament, which are on the outsides of the knee, but regarding the twisting motion of the knee itself I think it’s a little more difficult to control that with a brace but from a psychological aspect I think a lot of athletes feel that they need to have it out there because they feel a little bit more inhibited or a little bit scared in going back to playing without it.
BOB LEWIS – Speaking of football, how about linemen?
BENNETT – Exactly.
SIMONICH – I would say, real quick, there’s a football linemen question, a lot more in high school now, the varsity level, most of them are wearing some type of knee brace and I think that’s pretty reasonable. In terms of bracing, it’s very important that if you do not have a ligament tear, like an ACL, I think you can wear a brace if you want to, to feel better, but your knee doesn’t need it. ACL tears, if you have a brace, or MCL tears, if you have one of those injuries, I think knee bracing can help, but if you have instability with the brace on you really should think about having a surgical procedure if you and your doctor think that’s best.
BENNETT – Excellent. The number over here is 281-633-8600, once again I wanted to give a shout out to the Texas Sports Medicine Institute for sponsoring the show, feel free to check it out, it is a great facility out between Katy and Sugar Land, we’ve got top-notch docs over there from the University of Texas, from Baylor, from Fondren, as well as some independent physicians as well. We definitely specialize in everything from orthopedic sports medicine, podiatry, to pain management. But feel free to come by or check out the website. And Dr. Simonich, if they want to get in touch with you, how do they do that?
SIMONICH – I think the main number in our office in Katy is probably the best way, 281-392-6797, and we can get you from there to me very easily.
BENNETT – We appreciate that, and if you actually want to look up my website it’s www.jmichaelbennet.com Feel free to go ahead and surf it, I’ve got some interesting videos and information there, graphics regarding some of the topics we’ve talked about today. We’ve been discussing a little bit about the anatomy of knees, we took some calls, we also talked about some bracing, we’ve talked about ACL injuries and what I want to make sure everybody understands is that these are all of our opinions here but each of you has your doctors and feel free to discuss this freely with your physicians when you come up with a plan. And we discussed this in the last show as far as red flags and things to look for, you’ve got to have an open dialogue with your physician, you’ve got to be able to work together on a plan, his compliance is the big battle here that you’re dealing with. And if you and your physician are not on the same page and you are not finding the right road for compliance, then there’s going to be a big issue because really it’s a 50/50 game with you and your physician and you’ve got to work together on this. Feel free to discuss any of these topics with your physician or feel free to call any of us over here at 281-633-8600 for any of your questions regarding knee injuries or knee pain.
So anyway this is the segment where we go into a little bit about “don’t believe the hype,” this is where I like to go into where like you have anterior knee pain and the typical response is first off, nowadays, you’re not going to leave your house, you’re going to basically go and type into your Internet and see what’s out there and all of a sudden you get all of these sites that pop up that say, “Instant Cure” or “Cartilage Cure,” or “Come see us, we’re going to deal with monkey’s blood and tiger’s blood” and all of this other stuff like PRP and stem cells and you know the key is really to sift through all of this stuff and find out what is legitimate and what is not and what works and what doesn’t because the last thing you want to do is open up your pocketbook, pay all this money and be stuck at square one without any kind of result whatsoever.
So you really do have to do your due diligence regarding this stuff, you’ve got to research it on your own and ask your friends and family because honestly those are the best referral sources you can get since those are the people that have been through it and have come through the other side and they can tell you what worked for them and what didn’t. Because a lot of this stuff is really cutting edge and there are pluses and minuses with it.
For instance, there is something called viscosupplementation, something you see a lot of doctors are using now, and this has to do a lot really with arthritic changes in the knee. The fancy term is chondromalacia and there’s actually different types of chondromalacia but basically, there’s either fraying or there’s bare bone, and there’s some in between the two there, and what I’ve found in my practice regarding viscosupplementation – which are hyaluronic acid acid injections in the joint – is that it really doesn’t work in the severe arthritis where it’s completely bald and there’s no cartilage left.
It works usually in patients that have moderate to mild arthritic changes in the joint and it is a series of about one to five injections depending on what type of solution you are using and there’s a number of solutions out there just depending on that physician’s choice, and I’ve found that it can in most cases give you about six months to a year’s worth of pain relief regarding arthritis. Now what I tell patients, though, is that this is for those that just have wearing down of the cartilage.
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If you’ve experienced a knee injury or you have knee pain and would like an appointment for a knee evaluation with Dr. Bennett, please call 281-633-8600.
