Using a walking stick or cane for osteoarthritis in the knee or hip

Dr Milena Simic, physiotherapy lecturer

Canes are strongly recommended for management, overall management of people with the knee or hip osteoarthritis. The main reason is that it's able to offload some of  the damaging joint stresses that occur as  we do our regular walking and activities  and so in using the walking stick and  it can actually lead to reductions in  pain and also can allow people to do their daily activities a little bit easier.

What does a walking stick do?

Dr Milena Simic, physiotherapy lecturer

 So, this is a walking stick or sometimes referred to as walking cane um it's used quite frequently to for people with joint disease such as osteoarthritis to offload some of their body weight through it as they take a step.

So, the cane can be used in various different ways it's it can be used as recreational equipment, basically so, people u] can use the walking stick only you when they're doing their regular daily walks around the parks and so on. It can also be used constantly, so, within the house and also outside of the house, it really depends on why somebody needs to use a walking stick as to how they're going to use it. If people are trying to use it to reduce the joint stresses in their knees or hips it’s probably best for them to use it during  their recreational activities. but if they need to use it for balance uh you know to improve their balance, they can use it on a more regular basis.

Types of walking sticks

Dr Milena Simic, physiotherapy lecturer

There are several types of walking sticks or canes, the most common is a single point stick or a single point walking stick just like the one that we showed before. There's also four-point stick available. they are not used that commonly and there are also different types of walking aids that people can use so things like hiking poles. 

There are a lot of proven benefits to using a walking cane, unfortunately they don’t seem to be the same effects as using a hiking pole. So, hiking poles have recently become a lot more popular because of their sporting nature. Unfortunately, the load reducing effects haven't been proven with hiking poles and they can actually increase the forces in people with a knee osteoarthritis. So, I would just be a little bit cautious if I was to choose hiking poles if I had knee osteoarthritist.

Is using a walking stick right for everyone?

Dr Milena Simic, physiotherapy lecturer

There are some people for whom a walking stick might not be appropriate and those are predominantly people who might have troubles or some sort of injuries to their upper limb so their arms or their hands or their elbows and they might not be able to place appropriate weight through the handle. People who also have trouble coordinating the movement might have difficulty in achieving the same load reducing benefits to the knees and hips and feet and also people who have generalised widespread  arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis might  have difficulty using the walking stick to offload.  So, for people with rheumatoid arthritis they can also you know use this walking cane but they might need to see an occupational therapist to get a specially designed handle so that they can actually place adequate forces through it.

Benefits of using a walking stick for osteoarthritis

Dr Milena Simic, physiotherapy lecturer

So using a walking cane will reduce the pain, it will improve your ability to  do your daily tasks, it will improve the  exercise that you can do and be able to do  more and most importantly it can actually  slow down the progression of osteoarthritis.