Navigating life with achy, arthritic knees is not only challenging — simply getting out of the car becomes more difficult — it’s also downright painful.
You’re definitely not alone if this has been your experience. Worldwide, 365 million people have knee osteoarthritis (OA) and 46% of the general population will develop knee OA at some point in their lives.
Since there’s no cure for knee OA, options to help you move without pain are limited, and you may find some unappealing, such as surgery or opioid-based pain medications, both of which carry high risks.
At Pain Medicine Consultants, our team of arthritis experts has had great success addressing knee pain with a different type of treatment that’s far less risky: hyaluronic acid treatments, or viscosupplementation.
Here’s a look at how this therapy can improve function in your knee and reduce pain with minimal risks to your health and wellness.
Since we’re discussing a specific treatment option for knee OA, we find it’s helpful to have a good idea about what we’re up against. When you have knee OA, the protective cartilage that covers the bones inside these large joints starts to break down.
This cartilage loss not only allows more friction between the bones inside your knees, it can lead to bone and cartilage fragments inside your joint (loose bodies) that create pain and movement issues.
As we mentioned, there’s no cure for knee OA and, worse still, the disease is progressive, so early action is the best way to slow this progression.
Since your pain and loss of function is largely due to loss of lubrication and cushioning inside your knees, that may be the best place to target.
With our hyaluronic acid (HA) injections, that’s exactly our goal. HA is found naturally in your body and in most all of your joints. This gooey substance allows for friction-free movement in your joints, and it has the remarkable ability to retain moisture (lubrication) — a quarter teaspoon of HA can hold 1.5 gallons of water.
At our practice, we use Hyalgan® injections, which we inject directly into your knee using X-ray guidance. The HA in the Hyalgan injections bonds with the synovial fluid in your knees, which is a thick fluid in your joints that provides lubrication.
With the added boost to your synovial fluid, your knees can move more like the well-oiled machines these joints once were.
In most cases, we recommend that patients undergo a series of 3-5 Hyalgan injections, which we space apart by a week.
After the third treatment, many of our patients start to realize the benefits of these injections and are able to move more freely and without pain.
And these results can often last six months or more, during which time you can engage in some physical therapy for your knees that will really strengthen and slow the degeneration in the joints.
And should the pain return, you can come back for another round of HA injections so you can continue to enjoy the freedom of moving around again.
If you’d like to ditch the pain pills and put off surgery, we urge you to explore these highly effective HA injections. To get started, please contact one of our offices in Pleasant Hill, Corte Madera, or Pleasanton, California, to schedule an appointment.
