Pillar 1: Get Informed
What does it mean to have mild, moderate or severe knee OA?
In addition to the location of the arthritis within the knee, it is also good to know what the x-rays say about how severe the arthritis is, or what stage of progression the OA is at. There are various treatment decisions that are made by your healthcare providers (especially surgeons, specialists, or those making off loading braces and exercise programs).
Your doctor will tend to rate the arthritis as mild, moderate or severe and this correlates with the degrees of damage and progression of the disease within the joint.
You may also hear of the arthritis classified as between Grades 0 and 4. This scale is known as the “Kellgren and Lawrence” grading scale for knee osteoarthritis and is based on your x-ray findings. If your are interested in going a bit deeper on the stages of arthritis, you can watch the video on the Kellgren and Lawrence scale below. But after watching the short video, make sure to keep scrolling down, as there are some important caveats to understand about knee OA x-ray findings and grading.
Although there can be a rough correlation between x-ray findings and disability, it is important to understand that this is not always the case. Like Dr. Peng says at the end of the above video, we have seen many patients in our clinic whose x-rays are at least moderate to severe on x-ray but have very mild symptoms. Studies seem to agree with this.
So although joint damage on x-ray does indicate you have a higher likelihood of having joint osteoarthritis pain, it may not have a true relation to the severity of what you actually experience. Decisions around how to treat your knee osteoarthritis need to be based not only on what your knee looks like on imaging, but also on how your knee truly affects your function and quality of life. All aspects of the condition need to be considered in order to appropriately classify your knee OA as mild, moderate or severe.
The take home message is don’t let your imaging findings discourage you from being as active as you can and working towards making your condition better!