Osteoarthritis - Know The Symptoms Of It!

Hello,

I am Dr. Shivraj Jadhav, Orthopedist. Today I will talk about osteoarthritis. It is the disease of the joint and it is characterized by inflammation, pain, stiffness, and loss of range of motion. There are 2 varieties of primary and secondary. In the primary, there is no cause. Secondary can be caused due to any cause like injury, trauma, birth deformity, hormonal imbalance like diabetes and obesity. What are the symptoms of osteoarthritis? The patient usually comes with severe pain in the joints, swelling, crackling sound, loss of range of motion.

Early morning stiffness is very common in these people. So, we have to diagnose the condition first. How do we diagnose? The common things which we check, clinical testing. First Dr checks the symptoms of the patients. The patient may complain of multiple joint pain. Fingers show some nodular enlargement. The other symptom is cracking sound from the joint. Suppose we bend our joints then there is sound. The other complaints are seen at the time of the x-ray. When we do an x-ray, we see osteoporosis or some kind of extra bone formation which is called bone spur.

Or some reduction in the joint space. We do CT scan or MRIs. In this, we take out some fluid from the joint and send for the analysis. We get to know if any infection is there, inflammatory condition or TB. Another diagnostic test which is done is orthoscopy. It is a kind of diagnostic and surgical thing in which the surgeon passes the camera and tube inside the joint to check whether the joint is destructive or not. We see degeneration of the cartilage. Let us know how this disease happen? We will take the example of the knee joint. There are 3 bones in the joint and there is cushioning effect and we call it cartilage. As the person gets aged, the cartilage starts getting destroyed. At that moment we start getting the friction at the lower bone which causes inflammation and the pain.

So, this is the cause of the osteoarthritis. Along with the bone the ligaments, muscles and the soft tissue muscles, they all get swollen. This causes stiffness. How we treat this? So, the first thing is rest. The patient should not exercise in such cases. 2nd is physical and occupational therapies. We also can go for support like a knee cap or some kind of lumbar belt. Like we use for back pain. The other part we do is physiotherapy. The other form of treatment is medicine. When things are not getting resolved by the natural treatment then surgeon prescribes the medicines. There are common anti-inflammatory medicines, pain killers, steroid doses. Recently we have got a huge bunch of nutritional supplements. Because of this joint is getting mobility back to normal. We can inject oil also into the knee. There are 2-6 ml syringes. Also, we prescribe some calcium tablets to the patient.

We give vitamin-D3 supplements. If there is diabetes, obesity, we ask patients to correct all these along with the knee. So, this is a team effort. If nothing works over the patient then we have to give surgery to the patient. So, the common surgery is a knee or hip replacement. In this, we remove all the damaged part and place steel cups there. So, after this, the surface is as good as a new one. And the longevity of the knee increases to 15-20 years more. The next is osteotomy. In this, we remove some part of the bone and offload the joint from the weight-bearing area. Sometimes, we see that people walk like Donald duck. So, this is the basic concept of this problem. In case there is no relief then you can also go for a natural therapy or acupuncture but 90-95% of the patients are settled with this kind of therapies. If you are not getting relief, feel free to contact me through Lybrate.

Thank You.