This is a chronic illness that can cause damage to the tissues and cartilage and is primarily characterized by stiffness, loss of function, and pain. There are various causes of arthritis, due to damage caused in the joint cartilage also around the tissues that become very common as the person ages. Other common symptoms are pain, bony overgrowth and swelling along with stiffness that comes with inactivity and awakening and goes away within 30 minutes in specific cases when the joint is moved.
Physicians diagnose on the basis of symptoms conducting x-rays. The treatment would include certain physical measures and exercises with drugs that help in reduce the pain and improve function. However, in severe cases, there are certain specific or joint surgeries.
The most common kind of joint disorder is Osteoarthritis and often starts around 40s and 50s, affecting all people by some degree. Around 40 and before, it is mostly the men who develop osteoarthritis than women, most of the time because of certain deformities and injuries. Many people show evidence of osteoarthritis by the time they are 40 years, when x-rayed, with only half of them showing any symptoms. From the age between 40 and 70, it is the women who are found with more deformities than men. After people reach 70 years, the disorder is found equally predominant in both the sexes.
Osteoarthritis can be classified as:
- Primary osteoarthritis
- Secondary Osteoarthritis
The idiopathic or primary osteoarthritis hasn’t found its cause of existence in most of the cases. Primary osteoarthritis may affect only a certain parts of the joints, like the knee.
However, the secondary osteoarthritis comes with another condition or disease, like:
- Certain infections
- A kind of joint abnormality that showed up since birth
- Some kind of injury
- Some kinds of metabolic disorders like, more percentage of iron in the body or excess amount of copper in the liver
- In cases like gout and arthritis, the damage that has been caused in the joint cartilage
Some people who are of the habit of repetitively stressing a joint or group of joints, like that of foundry workers, bus drivers, coal miners, and farmers are found to be more at risk. When knee osteoarthritis attacks, it is primarily owing to jobs that involving bending the joint and working long hours. Curiously enough, running long distance does not aggravate or increase the risk where this disorder can be worse. However, once this symptom develops, this kind of exercise can make it worse. One of the prime contributing factors to osteoarthritis is obesity and it is especially seen in women.
Causes
The general function of the cartilage is to reduce the level of friction in joints and help protect the joints from wearing out, mostly even after years of having used them. Osteoarthritis is most of the time caused by damage of tissues. Trying to repair the joints that are damaged, chemical accumulation happens in the joint, which increases the production of cartilage, like collagen (a kind of tough and fibrous protein found in the connective tissue) along with proteoglycans (those substances that provide resilience). Also, cartilage swelling could be due to water retention, it could become soft, further develop cracks mainly on the surface. Tiny cavities could form inside the bone under the cartilage, something that weakens the bone.
Several other complications may appear on the bone and tissue, leading to worsened conditions of osteoarthritis. Certain instances where bones can overgrow through the joint edges, can lead to developing osteophytes. Osteoarthritis of any types causes severe pain and comes with a lot of medical procedures involved.
Suresh Hospital’s Osteoarthritis Treatment
at Suresh Hospital, the bones, muscles and joints ../department engages in treating patients with osteoarthritis also. There are expert physicians, surgeons and other medical and non medical staffs, who take complete responsibility of diagnosis, treatment, surgery, and post surgical or cure consultations. Some of our physicians come from renowned medical schools of India and abroad and are deft at handling mild to most advanced cases.