Dr. Susan Whiteman describes her journey into the nether world of bad knees and the treatments that may not help in this Washington Post article:
As any of the millions of Americans tottering around on ramshackle cartilage and ruptured ligaments can attest, the knee rates as the most unsound joint in the body. Each year, surgeons condemn more than 260,000 dilapidated knee joints and rebuild them, cementing titanium and polyethylene plastic to their skeletal ruins. Despite meaty muscles to brace it, despite a scaffold of ropy ligaments and tendons to buttress it, despite the bony shingle of a kneecap to shelter it, this load-bearing hinge between the two longest columns of bone in the body is prone to injury. Once damaged, the timbers of a leg shiver with the ravages of osteoarthritis.
. . . As is common in early osteoarthritis, my knees don’t hurt. Not yet. But I know what lies ahead. As osteoarthritis progresses, cartilage, which acts as a cushion between the bones of a joint, grinds down. Bone scrapes against bone. That hurts — a lot. The time for me to act to avoid the pain, debilitation and joint replacement surgery associated with the condition, I figure, is now.
Find out what she discovers from her evaluation of the available treatments.
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