While surgery doesn’t restore the same level of comfort and function patients had in their younger years, before they developed arthritis, the authors write in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatology that knee replacement can serve as a time machine of sorts, turning back the clock to a point when patients were less disabled.
Researchers examined how much pain improved from six months before knee replacement until six months afterward in 315 patients with osteoarthritis, the most common form caused by wear and tear on cartilage, and in 834 patients with RA, an immune system disorder that causes joint swelling.
“The vast majority of patients had their symptoms improve dramatically from the surgery, but this procedure is not a cure – RA patients will continue to need to treat their disease outside of the joint replacement,” senior study author Kaleb Michaud said by email.
Knee replacement is one of the most common surgeries, with about 720,000 people in the U.S. alone getting this procedure last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Follow these topics: Arthritis: Osteoarthritis, Knee Replacement
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