A breakthrough shows an effective treatment that relieves the pain of osteoarthritis in the knee without drugs or surgery.
The treatment doesn’t even require any hospital stay, recovery time or rehab exercises.
Osteoarthritis is a degenerative condition that involves a progressive wearing down or thinning of the cartilage in the knee joint.
For some patients the result is eventually a bone-on-bone contact, causing a lot of pain just from walking.
Bone-on-bone contact of osteoarthritis. Scuba-limp/Commonswiki
Pain Relief from Knee Osteoarthrits: No Drugs, No Joint Replacement
The simple and painless procedure is called geniculate artery embolization (GAE).
This image-guided treatment blocks arteries in the knee, resulting in less inflammation and therefore less pain.
“Geniculate artery embolization is a relatively new procedure [as of 2022] for treating arthritis pain in the knee,” says Marc F. Matarazzo, MD, a board certified orthopedic surgeon with The Center for Bone & Joint Surgery of the Palm Beaches, FL.
“There are several randomized controlled trials currently being conducted.
“This procedure uses a minimally invasive technique to disrupt the blood flow at the site of pain.
“It is thought that this inhibits neovascularization [growth of new blood vessels], leading to the breakdown of tissue and feeding of inflammation and knee osteoarthritis.
“There are some promising initial data regarding its efficacy.
“This should not be confused with geniculate nerve radiofrequency ablation, which is also a minimally invasive treatment for pain related to osteoarthritis of the knee.
“This procedure has a more established track record and has been shown in one study to be superior to NSAIDs and an intra-articular cortisone injection.”
How is GAE done?
• An interventional radiologist inserts a catheter through an incision the size of a pinhole.
• This blocks the very small arteries within the knee’s lining, reducing inflammation caused by the osteoarthritis.
• GAE is an outpatient treatment.
• It takes 45 to 90 minutes.
In a small study by Bagla et al, there were no adverse side effects of the procedure.
After one month, patients continued to report pain relief.
If you’re suffering from the pain of osteoarthritis in your knee, you may want to ask your orthopedic surgeon about geniculate artery embolization.
But keep in mind that GAE is not a cure for the degenerative process of osteoarthritis.
Dr. Matarazzo
