In the spring of 2006, her right knee started to swell and hurt, and she had difficulty walking and gradually got worse. He was treated with joint cavity closure. After a few days, he went to another clinic for acupuncture and acupuncture treatment several times, but his symptoms worsened after a few days of recovery. He was unable to work and had difficulty moving around, so his children brought him to our hospital for acupuncture and knife treatment. He was admitted to the hospital for one week due to the heavy knee swelling, pain and fluid accumulation, and was treated twice with lumbar acupuncture and once with medial collateral ligament of the knee joint. Wu Jun, Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, Nantong City Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine
In recent years, our department has treated dozens of cases of geriatric knee arthritis like Mrs. Zhu’s. Through theoretical research and clinical practice, we have initially mastered the pathogenesis of geriatric knee arthritis. As a result, we have achieved more satisfactory treatment results in most cases. Many patients are also like Zhu, who had been treated by various methods with poor results before coming to our department, and in the past the doctors’ treatment was usually focused on the diseased knee joint. Doctors believe that since the knee joint is swollen and painful combined with joint cavity fluid, there is local aseptic inflammation, so pumping the joint cavity fluid and sealing the painful spot and joint cavity became the conventional treatment. Although the symptoms can be temporarily controlled, but because there is a deeper level of the causative factors have not been eradicated, so the relapse rate is very high, the patient after a period of time to come back to the clinic, after several times hormone closure treatment, the result is “wildfire can not be burned, the spring breeze blowing again.” Some of them are not only not reduced but also aggravated. Moreover, doctors know that excessive use of hormones will produce many side effects, so the treating doctors often lose confidence and are at their wits’ end.
After research, we believe that there are many factors that contribute to the development of age-related knee osteoarthritis, such as excessive weight bearing on the knee, injury to the knee joint when young, natural degeneration of the knee joint, etc., but there is a more important and prevalent cause that is easily overlooked, which is the causative factor of the lower back. We have found that most elderly patients with knee arthritis have chronic lumbar diseases such as lumbar osteoarthrosis, lumbar disc herniation or bulge, lumbar spondylolisthesis, lumbar spinal stenosis, and lumbar strain. The nerves that direct the movement of the muscles and ligaments of the lower extremities, including the knee, emanate from the lumbar region, and various lumbar diseases can affect the function of the nerves. Just as multiple people must be directed to lift heavy objects in order to coordinate their movements with each other, knee movements also require nerve command, and once the command of multiple muscles and ligaments is lost in completing knee movements, there will be uneven force between muscles and ligaments, and muscles or ligaments that are overloaded will be The injured soft tissues will become protectively tense and spastic. This leads to uneven frictional damage to the knee joint surface, resulting in a series of arthritic symptoms such as exudation, swelling, and pain. Therefore, the treatment of age-related knee osteoarthritis should not only focus on the local knee joint, but also on the treatment of lumbar lesions. This is the only way to improve the cure rate and to achieve long-term relapse resistance. We have also learned that for knee osteoarthritis caused by obesity and overweight, knee osteoarthritis with severe degeneration and deformation over the years, and knee meniscus damage, the effect of acupuncture treatment alone is less than ideal. Further treatment must be done in related departments such as orthopedics.