How can osteoarthritis of the knee be treated effectively? Osteoarthritis of the knee (OA) has many different names, such as: proliferative arthritis of the knee, degenerative arthritis, age-related arthritis, etc. It is a common knee disease in the elderly. Osteoarthritis of the knee is a chronic inflammatory disease caused by degenerative changes in knee cartilage, mainly osteophytes at the edge of the joint, involving cartilage and subchondral bone, synovium, joint capsule and other important structures of the joint. The main symptoms are knee pain or varying degrees of dysfunction, and some patients have joint swelling and fluid accumulation, which seriously affects the quality of life of patients. How is knee osteoarthritis diagnosed? Diagnostic criteria for knee OA: (1) Recurrent knee pain within the past month (2) X-ray (standing or weight-bearing position) shows narrowing of the joint space, subchondral bone sclerosis3) and/or cystic changes, and bone redundancy formation at the joint edge (3) Elderly patients (≥40 years old) (4) When waking up in the morning, the joint is stiff for ≤3 minutes and there is a “clicking” sound when moving ” sound of bones rubbing together, or the feeling of bones rubbing together. If you find that your disease meets the above diagnostic conditions, you’d better go to the hospital as soon as possible. This is because it is likely that you already have osteoarthritis of the knee. Is there a good treatment for knee osteoarthritis? Patients with knee osteoarthritis can be classified into early, early, middle and late stages according to the pain and the degree of impact on daily activities, and there are different treatment strategies for different stages. 1. Conservative treatment Exercise + physical therapy Conservative treatment is suitable when you just have symptoms, when symptoms occur intermittently, and when the degree is mild. For example, adjusting lifestyle and exercise patterns, avoiding movements or sports that increase the weight on the knee joint, such as climbing mountains, stairs, squatting, kneeling and so on. At the same time, strengthen the thigh muscles, such as straight leg raising exercises. With the help of physical therapy, many patients with mild cases can achieve the goal of reducing symptoms and slowing down the development of the disease through the above treatments. For patients whose pain symptoms are not relieved satisfactorily after the above treatment, anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs, sodium vitreous acid injections in the joint cavity, and crutches to reduce the weight of the joint can be added intermittently. If these conservative treatment measures can relieve or control the joint pain and meet the individual’s needs for daily work life, surgery is not necessary. 3.Surgical treatment If the pain is not relieved satisfactorily after taking anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs, or if the drugs are effective, but the pain is obvious once the drugs are stopped, which seriously affects the quality of life, it is necessary to consider surgical treatment. There are many surgical procedures, including minimally invasive arthroscopic debridement, osteotomy, unicondylar surface replacement and total knee surface replacement, each of which has its own indications, mainly based on the severity of the osteoarthritis. In addition, we would like to remind all patients that once knee pain occurs and osteoarthritis of the knee occurs, they should go to a regular hospital in a timely manner and not blindly believe in prescriptions and use other methods indiscriminately, losing the best time for treatment.