Osgood Schlatters Disease And What You Need To Know
The worst case scenario is that Osgood Schlatters can however continue into adulthood. It usually strike during a growth spurt and affects millions of active and otherwise healthy children every year.
The presenting symptom is typically intense knee pain. It usually occurs everyday during sporting activities such as running and jumping and also going up and down stairs. Pain is mild and intermittent initially. In the acute phase the pain is severe and continuous in nature. Impact of the affected area can be very painful.
Some children can hardly walk during spells of suffering the condition, which is heartbreaking for parents.
It is usually quite straight forward to tell if you child has Osgood Schlatters. Firstly the child be aged between eight and sixteen and going through a growth spurt and boys suffer more than girls. The child will be active, maybe playing sports on a regular basis. The final indicator is a painful lump at the top of the shin bone at the front of the knee. It is usually tender to touch. If you suspect that your child has this then please visit your doctor first of all. Do not try and treat the condition at home without a professional diagnosis.
There are a variety of treatments available to sufferers. It is important to cover what will happen if you do nothing.
The present treatment advice is to treat the symptoms of Osgood Schlatters Disease. This means Rest, Ice, Compression to reduce the pain and swelling, anti-inflammatory medication and modification of sporting activities.
This advice does not address the cause of the problem. This means that it is likely that the condition will return when the child resumes sports. When Osgood Schlatters returns the lump can increase in size and the soft cartilage starts to change into bone making the knee lump permanent. This will have future implications as over half of patients with these lumps will have pain whenever they kneel down for the rest of their lives.
A number of chronic sufferers may need to have bony splinters surgically removed from the front of their knees. Eventually painful symptoms suffered with activity will go as they finish their growth spurt. So if you do nothing it will finally go in two to three years.
There is a treatment which has been scientifically proven at The European Congress of Sports Science Conference in Portugal, 2008.
This proven home treatment is called the Strickland Protocol and there is a wealth of information out there on the internet and on wikipedia.
The results were: "All patients achieved a full wall squat in an average of 20 days (plus or minus12) with a maximum of 50. The improvement in wall slide was significant to 98% for each recording. Upon full wall slide patients were discharged and returned to their sporting activities as normal, with no reported further problems. At various follow-up dates (1-5 years) only 2 patients reported recurrence but they had not followed the recommended advice on stretching."
The Strickland Protocol is readily available online and usually comes with long term telephone or email support from a world-leading physiotherapist. The child can become pain free and cured of Osgood Schlatter Disease within 3 weeks. However the child must completely stop all sporting activities and the protocol must be strictly followed every single day with the help of the parents. It does not work for adults suffering the condition.
There are health supplements and braces available on the internet which have little of no scientific proof or curing the condition.
Paul Scholes of Manchester United was a sufferer of Osgood Schlatters, as were many sporting stars around the world.