Knee Arthritis

Dear friends,

I’m Dr. Shekhar Srivastav. I’m senior consultant of orthopedic at Sant Permanand hospital and I have clinic at Jagriti Enclave name Prime Specialty Clinic.

Today I ll be speaking on knee arthritis and its management, the causes of knee arthritis and how do we manage it. Now if we see the knee is compose of these two bones, this is a thigh bone and this is a leg bone and this forms a knee joint. Now the knee joint’s end of the bone is covered with cartilage. Now cartilage are cushion like structures which helps in shock absorptions and helps in smooth motion of the knee joint. Now when this cartilage get destroyed you get arthritis. So there are many causes of arthritis like infection it can be any inflammatory cause, trauma. But the most common cause is aging process. As we age due to wear and tear the cartilage gets destroyed and start getting this arthritis. So the patient will first complain of pain and stiffness while walking. Then he will have difficulty in climbing up the stairs or having difficulty walking long distances as the problem increases you will have problem in getting up from sitting position, complain of pain, stiffness and swelling in the knee joint and in the severe stages there will be the deformity of the knee. You must have seen your neighbors or your parents having bow legs which is because of advance form of arthritis of the knee joint the osteoarthritis of the knee joint. Now there are many factors which contribute to arthritis of the knee joint. The most common being is aging process i.e. because of wear and tear but we also see arthritis more in females or there is also some sort of family tendency it means that if your parents were having arthritis then there is slightly higher chance that you may develop arthritis. How can we prevent it? So there are various things which you can do to prevent the symptoms of arthritis.as you know that it is an aging process so it can’t be stopped but the pain or disability arising from it can be prevented. First of all you have to maintain your weight so, obesity is one of the major causes of the arthritis so you should prevent obesity, you should keep your muscles strong by doing exercises, you should keep your joints flexible by exercising by stretching exercises and then there are also some medications. Physiotherapy, medications they all helps in preventing arthritis. But if you don’t get better with that means arthritis is severe then in that case sometimes you need injections. Now injections are given inside the knee joints and if given judiciously they will give very good relief.in very severe cases when the joint is totally destroyed, the joint is deformed, the limb is not align properly then in that case surgery is needed. There are different type of surgeries for arthritis which will be decided by your orthopedic surgeon. Now we have arthroscopy which is just a key ball incision surgery or we can have alignment surgery. One of the most common procedure we perform is knee replacement. Now people have misconception that in knee replacement whole of the knee is removed, it’s not done in that way. We just gave shape at the end of the bone and we put cap over it just like this so you just gave shape at the end of the bone and you applied a cap over it similarly for the leg bone also. You put the cap over it and in between there is a plastic type thing which allows smooth motion of the knee joint. So these are the various causes and treatments of arthritis. The treatment varies according to the grade of arthritis and that is decided by your orthopedic surgeon.

If you want to know more about the problem or if you have any problem or if you want to contact us, you can contact me at lybrate or you can contact me at Sant Permanand hospital or in my clinic Prime Specialty Clinic at Jagriti Enclave. Thank you!