Today, I went to SoftBank, a cell phone shop in the center of Sendai City, to have a routine checkup of my phone. The shop staff checked my phone and found nothing wrong with it, but when I was walking home, I was shocked to find that my left knee was aching like never before.
I am 57 years old now, but actually when I was 50, I had a little pain in my left knee for the first time, and when I went to a local orthopedic surgeon and had X-rays taken, the doctor told me that the cartilage in my knee was wearing away. At that time, I got compresses and put them on, and the pain went away after about a week, so I didn't pay much attention to it.
After that, my left knee was still somewhat unstable, but it was a subtle pain and I thought it was just like this. Yesterday, as expected, I was concerned and applied compresses that I had received a lot of from the orthopedist, but today, for the first time in my life, I experienced a throbbing pain in my left knee, and I was worried that I would have to go back to the orthopedist.
The other day, on August 14 and 15, I visited my maternal relative's house in Senmaya Town, Ichinoseki City, Iwate Prefecture, and was shocked to be shown the surgical scars (on both knees) where my aunt had undergone surgery and had artificial joints inserted for the same osteoarthritis of the knees as mine. Will this happen to me in the future?
But I am getting information about non-surgical management of knee osteoarthritis on X (formerly Twitter). It’s an article from November 2019.
https://diamond.jp/articles/-/221688
Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is estimated to affect approximately 8 million people in Japan.
It is the second most common disease in the field of orthopedics after low back pain, but there are no guidelines for its treatment in Japan, and so far, the guidelines of relevant international societies have been translated and used.
The international GL is revised every five years, and the latest version on “non-surgical therapy” was released in July this year. According to the new version, the core of treatment is centered on lifestyle modification and exercise therapy. Even light exercise, continued daily, is expected to inhibit progression. Muscle training around the thigh and knee joints also “does not betray” the disease.
When pain became severe, poultices and ointments would be recommended rather than anti-inflammatory analgesics to be taken. One reason for this may be that the drug delivery function of poultices - their ability to deliver active ingredients to the affected area and the active ingredients themselves for anti-inflammatory analgesics have evolved to the point that they can be expected to be as effective as painkillers that can be taken.
The visiting nurse also told me. She said that osteoarthritis of the knee is caused by muscles rather than bones. So she showed me how to do some stretches to strengthen the muscles. The visiting nurse is scheduled to come tomorrow, so I will ask her about the throbbing pain in my left knee today.