Bone spur, also known as osteophytes, is a common rheumatic disease, mostly seen in middle-aged and elderly people and heavy manual workers.
After the cartilage is destroyed, the cartilage membrane overgrows and produces new bone, which forms bone superfluous after ossification, which is a compensatory reaction in the pathological process of osteoarthritis. The hyperplastic bone is usually present around both ends of the bone, but when projected on a planar radiograph, it may only appear as a thick spur with a wide base and a thin tip. For ease of description, it is referred to as a “bone spur”.
Misconception 1.
Joint swelling and pain is caused by a bone spur
Some people think that a bone spur is a bone end like a nail or a bamboo spur that is deeply embedded in the tissue. Only when the bone growth is stimulated for a long time and sterile inflammation develops around the bone spur will it cause pain and other symptoms.
Misconception 2.
The larger the bone spur, the greater the joint swelling and pain
It is common to see patients who have bone spurs in both knees, but one side of the spur is very large, but the pain is very mild or even painless; the other side of the spur is small, but the pain is severe. This is because the large spur does not cause aseptic inflammation around the spur, but the small spur does. Therefore, there is no direct relationship between the size of the bone spur and the degree of pain.
Misconception 3.
If you exercise more, you will not develop bone spurs
This perception is only half right. Experiments have shown that long-term overload exercise or labor not only increases the wear and tear on the joint surface, but also produces high stress on the joints, stimulating bone remodeling, accelerating bone spur formation and subchondral bone hardening, and aggravating cartilage degeneration. On the other hand, proper and correct exercise and labor practices can prevent or treat osteoarthritis. Thus, exercise and labor are a double-edged sword.
Misconception 4.
Specialty drugs can eliminate bone spurs
Bone spurs have the same composition as normal bone tissue, and some of the so-called effective drugs that boast of dissolving or eliminating bone spurs are purely illusory. Although bone spurs can not be eliminated, but the inflammation is able to subside. Once the inflammation is eliminated, the pain is also relieved. Therefore, the key to the treatment of osteophytes is not the elimination of bone spurs, but the “permanent” elimination of the inflammation caused by bone spurs.
Misconception 5.
Surgical treatment is better than conservative treatment
Although surgery can remove bone spurs, it should be limited to a very small number of spurs that are compressing nerves, blood vessels, and the spinal cord, causing severe dysfunction, and for which conservative treatment is ineffective. Because surgery itself is also a form of trauma, it can cause sterile inflammation in some patients and even stimulate bone growth faster. In up to 40% of patients, the bone spur will recur after 15 years. Therefore, surgical excision does not necessarily cut off the root of the problem.
Misconception 6.
Bone spurs are harmful but not beneficial
In fact, bone growth is a compensatory mechanism of the body. In a sense, it is beneficial to the body. For example, some patients with long-term lumbar pain suddenly disappeared after several years, the X-ray found that the lumbar vertebrae had grown bone spurs, which increased the stability of the lumbar vertebrae and eliminated pain; another example is the lumbar vertebrae instability of patients with lumbar spondylolisthesis or lumbar tuberculosis, doctors will artificially create bone spurs, after surgery to remove the diseased tissue, put autologous bone between the two vertebrae, so that the two vertebrae fused together, after the generation of large beam bone spurs between the vertebrae The lumbar spine is stabilized, and the back pain is eliminated.