Treatment of knee osteoarthritis in the elderly

  Knee osteoarthritis is a common disease in elderly patients, usually mostly women over 60 years old. Patients often present with pain, unfavorable flexion and extension, swelling and deformation of the knee joint, causing great pain to elderly patients. There are many treatment methods for geriatric knee, the most common being oral medication, including Western medicine, Chinese medicine, and health care drugs, etc. However, the effect of medication is limited, often relieving symptoms and causing drug-related gastritis and even gastric bleeding if the drug is not chosen properly. Although physical therapy is effective, it is time-consuming, and transportation is a big problem when you go to the hospital every day. Based on our years of experience, we believe that comprehensive treatment is more effective for knee osteoarthritis. One is to treat the joint cavity with injections of small doses of hormones (limetasone or Depo-Provera) and sodium glutamate, only once a week, for eliminating inflammation and fluid in the joint cavity, and endothermic acupuncture for obvious pressure areas around the knee joint to completely eliminate inflammatory pain in the ligaments around the knee joint. In addition, attention should be paid to calcium supplementation in general. When supplementing calcium, we should not simply take oral calcium tablets, but also apply phosphonates (such as risedronate, alendronate), and salmon calcitonin should be given if calcium deficiency is serious. Through such systematic and comprehensive treatment, most of the general knee pain can be relieved. For severe knee patients, if conservative treatment is ineffective, knee joint replacement can be done if the economic and physical conditions allow, knee pain will disappear completely and the patient will feel many years younger.