Knee Deep in Pain

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease that affects millions of adults in the United States and is a significant healthcare burden for medical costs and loss of productivity. Although osteoarthritis may inhibit different joints in the body, the knee joint is most commonly affected, leading to knee pain, swelling, and stiffness. This issue is encountered by healthcare providers in orthopaedics, emergency medicine, and primary care daily, and the biomedical model taught in medical education often emphasizes a one-size-fits-all treatment approach. This literature review examines whether the biopsychosocial model could be used to manage chronic knee osteoarthritis instead. This report introduces the biopsychosocial model as a holistic approach that considers a patient's psychological and social factors in addition to the biology of disease. This report concludes that although the effectiveness of the biopsychosocial model and management of cancer-related pain have been studied, additional research is needed to examine the utilization of the biopsychosocial model with chronic knee osteoarthritis.