About Knee Cartilage Damage
The bones of your knee joint are coated with a layer of slippery tissue called cartilage, which reduces friction as the bones move over each other. Cartilage can be damaged or torn as a result of an accident or conditions such as arthritis.
Knee cartilage damage can be caused by a sudden twisting movement or a direct impact to the knee both of which happen in sports such as rugby, squash, football or skiing.
Arthritis is a common cause of knee cartilage damage. There are two main types of arthritis:
- osteoarthritis a degenerative condition that wears away bone and cartilage.
- rheumatoid arthritis an inflammatory disease causing swelling and stiffness in your joints, which can damage the bones and cartilage.
Minor cartilage damage can get better on its own after a few days, although more serious injuries or conditions will need treatment.
Cartilage has very little blood supply, meaning it is hard for it to repair itself. Surgery is usually the only option for more serious damage.
Getting A Second Opinion
A second opinion should be considered when deciding on a high-risk procedure like surgery or you want another opinion on your treatment options. ;It will also provide you with peace of mind. ;Multiple studies make a case for getting additional medical opinions.
In 2017, a;Mayo Clinic study;showed that 21% of patients who sought a second opinion left with a completely new diagnosis, and 66% were deemed partly correct, but refined or redefined by the second doctor.
You can ask your primary care doctor for another doctor to consider for a second opinion or;ask your family and friends for suggestions. ;Another option is to use a Telemedicine Second Opinion service from a local health center or a Virtual Care Service.
What Is The Treatment For Cartilage Loss In Knee Or No Cartilage In Knee
Treatment for knee cartilage damage is based on severity and the cause of cartilage loss in knee.
Medical management for cartilage loss in the knee or no cartilage in knee includes resting the knee joint and elevation to control swelling. In acute injuries, application of ice and compression with bandage may be advised. Medicines like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs help to reduce pain and swelling associated with cartilage loss in the knee or no cartilage in knee. Certain nutritional supplements and steroid injection may be considered with advice of the physician.
Physiotherapy treatment that involves local application of heat and ice, ultrasound, etc. may be helpful for treating cartilage loss in the knee or no cartilage in knee. Therapeutic exercise to strengthen the muscles around knee joint, help to prevent further injuries and improves overall strength of the joint. Knee braces for cartilage loss in the knee or no cartilage in knee can be used to provide support to the knee joint. Weight control, regular exercise and modification of activities are an important conservative treatment approach for cartilage loss in the knee or no cartilage in knee.
Surgical treatment for cartilage loss in the knee involves use of various techniques like
- Arthroscopic lavage and debridement â The torn off cartilage is shaved off using an arthroscope.
- Small holes are made into the bone under the damaged cartilage, to stimulate the marrow, which can help to produce new cartilage.
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This Is How To Regenerate Your Knee Cartilage
Proper diet is vital in keeping your joints problem free, but it also has a crucial role in revitalizing hip, knee and spine cartilage.
Moreover, maintaining optimal weight reducing excessive physical strain every day will keep things on track to keep your knee cartilage healthy.
Symptoms of Damaged Knee Cartilage
In order for you to fully understand the importance of cartilage, especially in the knees, where it holds most of our weight, we need to explain its structure and function.
The cartilage is a type of connective tissue which prevents the bones from grinding against each other and helps their mobility. This means its role is to keep our bones from damaging.
It is part of many other bone structures in the human body, such as the nose, bronchi, ears, chest, and lines and creases of the spine, elbows, knees, hips. It can be almost as hard as bone, however not as elastic as the muscle.
Cartilage distortions can be caused by various factors such as aging process and various degenerative diseases such as osteoarthritis, which commonly affects the joints on your shoulders, neck , hip, knee, hand and foot joints.
Furthermore, there can be many other factors that can damage the cartilage, such as excessive physical activity, obesity, mechanical injuries of some kind of impact or carrying heavy loads.
The following are the best tips and natural remedies for cartilage regeneration on your hips and knees:
Rebuild the Knee Cartilage
Recommended Food for Cartilage Regeneration
What Happens If You Dont Get A Knee Replacement
Delaying Knee Replacement Surgery May Diminish Health
The longer patients wait and allow their knee issues to affect them, the more it impacts overall health. For instance, an inability to walk without pain may lead to avoidance of exercise and weight gain which will put even more pressure on the painful knee.
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Articular Cartilage Repair Helps Restore Damaged Knee Joints
Procedure provides non-invasive option to deliver new life to injured joints
DAYTON, Ohio Painful joints dont always point to the need for replacement surgery, particularly in cases in which articular cartilage in the knee has been damaged by injury.
Articular cartilage is the smooth, white tissue covering the ends of bones where they form joints, allowing them to move with very little friction. When cartilage becomes damaged due to general wear and tear or injury, it does not easily heal on its own and requires surgical intervention. Thankfully, patients now have a variety of treatment options that can be used to restore healthy joints. These procedures help prevent or delay further wearing away of cartilage, which can lead to osteoarthritis as bone rubs against bone, eventually requiring joint replacement surgery.
A relatively new procedure known as Matrix-induced Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation removes a patients healthy tissue from a non-weight bearing area and grows new tissue that is later implanted into the affected area.
Recently the Food and Drug Administration approved a refinement of the MACI procedure which improves results and reduces complications and recovery time, said Eric Fester, MD, an orthopedic surgeon with Premier Orthopedics.; Its a nice even fill of the defect with a high density of cartilage cells, so it grows in better.
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What Is The Outlook For People With Articular Cartilage Injuries
The outlook is good for patients with these injuries, although not everyone will be able to resume all activities. Pain and discomfort can be relieved with both nonsurgical and surgical treatments. When the articular cartilage is damaged, surgical procedures can effectively repair and restore the tissue. In general, healthy individuals younger than 40 with minor articular cartilage injuries have the best outcomes and often successfully return to pre-injury activities. But not every patient is a suitable candidate for cartilage restoration or repair. These procedures are ideal for active people under age 50.
If left untreated, articular cartilage injuries can lead to the development of osteoarthritis, a condition in which the articular cartilage wears away, exposing the underlying bone. Joint replacement surgery may be required to treat osteoarthritis.
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What Causes Cartilage Loss In Your Joint
To fully understand why cartilage loss can be such an issue, you first have to understand why its important. Cartilage is the tissue that covers the ends of your bones where they meet together in your joint. It allows the bones to glide over each other smoothly and fluidly.
If your cartilage has worn away, your bones wont be able to move as smoothly and in severe cases can cause bone on bone friction and intense pain. This may also cause you to have swelling, stiffness, or grinding in your joint. There are three main reasons that you may experience loss of cartilage, including:
Surgery Is A Big Step Can Anything Be Done Earlier To Prevent Or Minimize Damage To Knee Cartilage
Of course, non-operative options for managing cartilage health are always our first recommendation. At MedSport, we encourage patients to exercise to keep their legs strong, especially the quadriceps muscles on the front of the thigh. And keeping ones weight under control is so important, especially if there is already some damage to the knee. The knees bear two to four times the bodys weight with each step and up to ten times that much when running or climbing. That means a ten-pound weight loss takes 40 pounds of pressure off the knee with every step taken through out the day . ;
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Caring For Your Knee Immediately After Injury
Studies On Damaged Cartilage Regeneration
A study done by the University of Maryland Medical Center concluded that;lysine deficiency can delay the;growth of damaged cartilage.;It can also affect the regeneration of skin cells, which damages the total reconstruction of the area involved with the physical damage.
12 mg of lysine for every kilo of body weight is what you should consume in order to help the body be able to rebuild cartilage faster. The foods that contain high levels of lysine are:
- Legumes
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Contrary To Popular Belief Cartilage In Human Joints Can Repair Itself Through A Process Similar To That Used By Creatures Such As Salamanders And Zebrafish To Regenerate Limbs Researchers At Duke Health Found This Process Could Be Harnessed As A Treatment For Osteoarthritis
Publishing in the journal Science Advances, the researchers identified a mechanism for cartilage repair that appears to be more robust in ankle joints and less so in hips. We believe that an understanding of this salamander-like regenerative capacity in humans, and the critically missing components of this regulatory circuit, could provide the foundation for new approaches to repair joint tissues and possibly whole human limbs, said senior author Virginia Byers Kraus, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the departments of Medicine, Pathology and Orthopedic Surgery at Duke.
Kraus and colleagues, including lead author Ming-Feng Hsueh, Ph.D., devised a way to determine the age of proteins using internal molecular clocks integral to amino acids, which convert one form to another with predictable regularity.
Newly created proteins in tissue have few or no amino acid conversions; older proteins have many. Understanding this process enabled the researchers to use sensitive mass spectrometry to identify when key proteins in human cartilage, including collagens, were young, middle-aged or old. They found that the age of cartilage largely depended on where it resided in the body. Cartilage in ankles is young, its middle-aged in the knee and old in the hips. This correlation between the age of human cartilage and its location in the body aligns with how limb repair occurs in certain animals, which more readily regenerate at the furthest tips, including the ends of legs or tails.
What Surgical Procedures Are Available
Many procedures to restore articular cartilage are done arthroscopically. During arthroscopy, the procedure is done through 2 small incisions . Some procedures require direct access to the affected area via an open incision . In general, recovery from an arthroscopic procedure is quicker and less painful than traditional, open surgery. Your doctor will discuss the options with you to determine what kind of procedure is right for you.
The most common procedures for damaged cartilage are:
- Chondroplasty
- Osteochondral Autograft Transplantation
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Symptoms Of Articular Cartilage Defects
Patients with articular cartilage damage experience symptoms such as joint pain, swelling, stiffness, and a decrease in range of motion of the knee. Damaged cartilage needs to be replaced with healthy cartilage and the procedure is known as cartilage replacement. It is a surgical procedure performed to replace the worn-out cartilage and is usually performed to treat patients with small areas of cartilage damage usually caused by sports or traumatic injuries. It is not indicated for those patients who have advanced arthritis of the knee.
Symptoms Causes And Effective Management Of Knee Cartilage Damage
This entry was posted on 23rd September 2016 by Michael Core.
Most people will suffer from cartilage damage at some point in their lives. In most cases the knee joint is involved. There are a number of symptoms which point to such damage, including pain in the joints, stiffness, swelling and a lessening of movement in the relevant joint. Cartilage is an extremely flexible yet tough tissue that is found in all areas of the body. It has two principle functions: as a shock absorber and as a mould.
All the joints within our body are covered with cartilage. The presence of the cartilage enables our bones to move over one another smoothly it reduces friction and therefore the potential for damage. It helps support the weight of movement, whether that is walking, stretching, bending or running. Knee cartilage damage is particularly common and treatment can vary depending on the extent of the damage sustained.
Cartilage tissue is flexible and tough, and its purpose is ideally illustrated when it comes to our more unique features, such as the nose and ears. These two extremities consist almost wholly of cartilage.
What marks cartilage out from other types of tissue is its lack of blood supply. Blood cells play a very important part in the process of repair if our tissues become damaged. It therefore follows that knee cartilage damage and other common cartilage issues are unable to be repaired in the same way as damaged muscle or skin.
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What Is The Treatment For A Knee Cartilage Injury
Treatment options depend on a number of factors, including how much the damage is affecting your everyday life and activities.
- Non-surgical treatment includes resting the joint, elevating it, applying ice to minimise swelling and protecting it using a support such as a knee brace. In some cases, this can be enough to reduce your symptoms. However, you may need to make some lifestyle changes, along with having physiotherapy and taking painkillers . You may also be offered injections to reduce inflammation in the joint
- Surgery: its unlikely that the cartilage will heal once it has been damaged. However, your consultant can carry out a number of procedures to help repair the damage. These include:
Initial Treatment And Self Care
If you’ve injured your joint and your symptoms are not too severe; for example, you’re still able to;put weight on and move the joint;;you can often look after yourself using PRICE therapy.
PRICE stands for:
- Protection protect the affected area from further injury by using a support, such as a knee brace
- Rest ;rest the affected joint as much as possible during the first 2 or 3 days , then try gradually returning to light activity over the next few days and weeks
- Ice apply an ice pack or a bag of frozen vegetables wrapped in a towel to the injured area for 15-20 minutes every 2-3 hours during the first 2 or 3 days
- Compression compress or bandage the injured area to limit any swelling and movement that could damage it further; you can use a simple elastic bandage or an elasticated tubular bandage available from a pharmacy
- Elevation keep the injured area raised and supported on a pillow whenever you can to help reduce swelling
If your joint is painful, take ordinary painkillers such as;paracetamol or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen.
Visit your GP if your symptoms have not started to improve after a few days of PRICE therapy.
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Is A Cartilage Defect The Same As Arthritis
No! This is very important to understand, as the treatments for a cartilage defect and the treatment of arthritis are very different. The treatments for cartilage defects are not appropriate, under any circumstance, for patients who have widespread arthritis of a joint. Performing any of the following procedures in a patient with arthritis will lead to poor results.