Donna D’Alessio, MD
Montville Pain & Veins · Serving Riverdale, NJ
Knee Pain Treatment for Riverdale, NJ
Kneecap pain, tendon pain and arthritis told apart by examination, then treated without surgery — about seven miles from Riverdale.
No referral needed to book · We check your benefits before anything is scheduled · 624 Main Rd, Suite 2B, Towaco, NJ 07082
Getting here from Riverdale
The Newark-Pompton Turnpike and then Jacksonville Road bring you from Riverdale into Towaco in about 11 minutes without traffic. The office at 624 Main Road, Suite 2B has parking on site, so there is no long walk from the car on a sore knee.
Not every sore knee is arthritis
Osteoarthritis is the commonest cause after middle age, but it is far from the only one, and the treatments are different:
- Around or behind the kneecap, worse going downstairs or after sitting a long time — often about how the thigh and hip muscles pull on the kneecap.
- Just below the kneecap, flaring with jumping, squatting and stairs — the patellar tendon.
- On the inner or outer side — tendons there too, the pes anserine on the inside and the iliotibial band on the outside, each with its own tender point.
- Catching, locking or giving way — a meniscus or a ligament, sometimes an old injury that never quite settled.
- Felt in the knee but coming from the hip — common enough that the hip is checked every time.
Tendons need load, not rest
When the trouble is a tendon, the instinct to rest it usually backfires. An unloaded tendon gets weaker and fails at a lower threshold once you return to activity. Treatment is a progressive loading programme, started where the tendon is comfortable and raised as it adapts. Recovery is measured in months, and the programme is reviewed as it goes. PRP is added for some tendon problems where the evidence supports it. See tendonitis.
When it is the joint
For an arthritic knee, a joint injection takes about fifteen minutes and settles the inflammation, and the easier weeks that follow are when strengthening can finally start. The evidence for PRP is strongest where knee arthritis is mild or moderate; its effect builds over six to twelve weeks rather than days, and it is usually paid for out of pocket. Read more about arthritis.
Who examines you
Dr. Donna D’Alessio is board certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. Before deciding anything she presses on the exact structure that hurts, tests the ligaments and menisci, watches how you walk and checks the strength of your hips and thighs. Imaging is ordered only to answer a particular question the examination leaves open.
Riverdale patients ask
Will a cortisone shot help a sore tendon? Sometimes, in the short term. In several tendons, though, the medium-term results of steroid injection are worse than doing nothing, and repeated injections into a degenerating tendon are not advisable. Dr. D’Alessio will tell you where one helps your problem and where it does not.
Are injections done with imaging? Where the anatomy needs it. Some joints, particularly the hip and the small facet joints of the spine, cannot be entered reliably by landmarks alone. You are told which approach your injection needs.
Tell us what’s going on
A consultation is a conversation and an examination, not a sales appointment. Dr. D’Alessio will tell you what she thinks is causing it, what can be done about it, and — when that is the honest answer — that you do not need a procedure.