Treatment Options For Joint Pains From Arthritis

If one is overweight, try to lose weight by doing more physical activity and eating a healthier diet. Regular exercise keeps you active and mobile and builds up muscle, thereby strengthening the joints and can improve symptoms.

Pain Killers 

Painkillers help with pain and stiffness but they don’t affect the arthritis itself and won’t repair the damage to your joint. Creams and gels can be applied directly onto painful joints . They are well tolerated because very little is absorbed into your bloodstream.

Nutritional Supplements 

Glucosamine and chondroitin are nutritional supplements. Studies in animals have found that glucosamine can both delay the breakdown of and repair damaged cartilage. However there is insufficient evidence to support the use of glucosamine in humans and one can expect only a mild-to-moderate reduction in pain

Joint injections

If pain from osteoarthritis is severe joint steroid injections are injected into the joints that can reduces swelling and pain. The injections can start working within a day or so and may improve pain for several weeks or months.

Hyaluronic acid injections, which help to lubricate your knee joint, are sometimes given but recent evidence that it works isn’t convincing.

Surgery 

May be recommended if you have severe pain and/or mobility problems.

Arthroscopy

If one has frequent painful locking/stiffening episodes especially in the knee joint,an operation to wash out loose fragments of bone and other tissue as joint can be performed by a minimally invasive key hole procedure called Arthroscopy.

Joint replacement surgery

Joint replacement therapy is most commonly carried out to replace hip and knee joints. It involves involves replacing a damaged, worn or diseased joint withan artificial joint made of special plastics and metal.

For most people, a replacement knee will last for at least 15 to 20 years, especially if the new knee is cared for properly and not put under too much strain.

There are two main types of surgery, depending on the severity of arthritis:

• total knee / hip replacement – both sides of your knee / hip joint are replaced

• partial (half) knee replacement (PKR) – only one side of your knee joints replaced in a smaller operation where more of the undamaged knee is preserved with a shorter hospital stay and recovery period.

Other surgical options for arthritis

Arthrodesis or Joint fusion

If hip or knee replacement is not suitable, especially in young people who do heavy manual work, one can consider an operation known as an arthrodesis, which fuses your joint in a permanent position. This means that your joint will be stronger and much less painful, although you will no longer be able to move it.

Osteotomy

In young, active people in whom a knee joint replacement would fail due to excessive use one can consider an operation called an osteotomy. This involves adding or removing a small section of bone either above or below your knee joint.  This helps realign your knee so your weight is no longer focused on the damaged part of your knee. An osteotomy can relieve your symptoms of osteoarthritis, although you may still need knee replacement surgery eventually as you grow old.

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Love Your Bones - Say No to Osteoporosis

World Osteoporosis Day which is being celebrated on October 20th of every year since 1997, is actually a year long campaign to create awareness about the disease. It is important, as the need of the hour for people to understand the immense burden caused by osteoporosis and the ways to overcome it.

Osteoporosis is a medical condition which leads to reduced bone mass with micro architectural deterioration and hence increasing the risk of fracture. So such fractures which occur due to trivial trauma (eg: falling from a walking height) are called fragility fractures. The sites more prone are spine, femur andradius. Osteoporosis  is usually known as the "silent killer" as it doesn’t show any prior symptoms and the person comes to know about it only after he sustains a fracture.

We have so many diseases in our country so why is this so important? The current population of India is around 1.2 billion. By 2020, there will be around 76 million people with their age greater than 65 years, which is quite a significant number.Worldwide it seems every 3 seconds one sustains an osteoporotic fracture. Approximately one in three women and one in five men aged over 50 years will suffer an osteoporotic fracture in their remaining lifetime. A prior fracture is associated with a 86% increased risk of any fracture. More than 50% of hip fractures in the world will occur in Asia by 2050 and the mortality rate is around 20-24% in the first year. Aren’t these statistics quite alarming?

The most sad part is  that we all have accepted this as a natural process of ageing. Whatever be our age, we shouldn’t break our bones with a trivial fall. If we do, then our bones are weak and it is not normal. It can be detected early and a fracture can be prevented with adequate treatment.

It’s widely known that osteoporosis usually affects the older people. But it’s actually a disease of the young with consequences in the older age. We usually attain the peak bone mass at 20 – 30 years of age, after which there is a gradual decline in the bone mass. So in the earlier stages of life, with the help of a good diet and healthy lifestyle one can attain the maximum bone mass. If they do so, the chances of them having a low bone mass  later in life will be less.

Similarly it’s usually thought as a disease of postmenopausal women. Yes of course the women are at a higher risk but men are no safer and are at a greater risk of getting a prostate cancer. Actually the mortality and morbidity post fracture is more in men. ‘Usually women maintain their health whereas men just go for repairs’. This attitude should change among men and they should also screen for osteoporosis rather than getting medical attention after a fracture. There are a lot of secondary causes for osteoporosis like drugs, various rheumatological,endocrine diseases etc. which have to be thought of particularly in males and those with fragility fractures at a younger age.

So it’s high time everybody becomes aware about this disease and its consequences. It can be screened effectively by DEXA scan. After detecting osteoporosis it can be effectively managed with the likes of Calcium, Vitamin D, Bisphosphonates,Parathormone analogues, Monoclonal antibodies etc. As we all know ‘prevention is better than cure’, one should try to maintain a healthy lifestyle by regular exercises, requisite sun exposure, adequate dietary intake of calcium and vitamin D. So let’s promote the caption ‘Love your bones’ i.e. the global symbol of bone health.

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