Arthritis is a swelling in the joints and includes symptoms like joint pain and stiffness and becomes worse with the growing age.
It can also be said to be joint inflammation and is called a rheumatoid condition.
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What Are The Shots Used For Knee Arthritis? Different Types!
Osteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis and other conditions which are included are rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and fibromyalgia.
The condition leads to pain, aching, swelling, or tenderness in more than one joint or area around the joints. Five different shots used for knee arthritis are given here.
Some most widely used shots that are used for knee pain are:
💉The steroids shots: These are also called corticosteroid shots or cortisone. The steroid shots are used to treat inflamed tissues by reducing tissue inflammation.
Shots are helpful in providing quick relief, this may provide a long term for about a few months and short term relief for about a week or no relief at all depending upon the person’s body.
💉Hyaluronic acid injection: Another most commonly used shot is a hyaluronic acid injection which is used to treat knee pain caused by osteoarthritis, hyaluronic acid is a natural fluid that our body makes which is necessary for the smooth working of joints and helps to provide lubrication to joints.
People suffering from osteoarthritis have affected joints lacking hyaluronic acids, the injection adds to your body and fills the acids in your joints. These injection shots are given to OA knee patients when they are not able to recover with painkillers or non-drug treatments.
💉Dextrose prolotherapy and saline prolotherapy: prolotherapy shots are used as an irritant solution for tissue repair. To temporarily increase the ligament and tendon strength and also to reduce the stiffness and inflammation in the joints the prolotherapy injections use sugar and salt solutions – dextrose and saline.
A person undergoing prolotherapy gets multiple shots of injections in their treatment session and the course the duration of the prolotherapy can be for three to six months depending upon the severity of the case.
Some other injections such as stem cell injections and platelet-rich plasma therapy (PRP).
💉Platelet-rich plasma therapy: In this method, blood is extracted from the person’s arm and platelet-rich plasma is separated from the other blood components. Then this plasma is injected into the joint, thus it helps in relieving the knee pain symptoms. This therapy uses a healing property to heal the damaged tissue.
💉Stem-cell injections: Stem cells are extracted from the patient’s blood, tissues, bone marrow and injected into the joint and thus it leads to slowing degeneration and reducing inflammation and pain, The stem cells usually develop into cartilage cells.
Side Effects Of The Injections
🔺Platelet-rich plasma therapy and stem-cell injections have not shown proper efficacy and there is limited evidence that it can help in knee pain which is caused by osteoarthritis. The formula used in making these injections are not standardized.
The American College of Rheumatology and the Arthritis Foundation are against stem cell injections and platelet therapy as there are limited studies proving their safety.
🔺Prolotherapy injections are usually safe and involve minute risks. Although some side effects can be seen including headache, bruising, swelling, and stiffness around the area in which injection is applied or infection at the site.
These symptoms are usually observed in the patients within three to four days after the treatment and involve a few weeks for total relief.
🔺In the case of hyaluronic acid, ice is usually placed on the injection site for getting relief against pain and swelling. Some of the common side effects of this injection are pain on the injection site, rash, swelling on the knee, nausea, diarrhea, headache.
In many cases, patients will suffer from these side effects temporarily and if these effects worsen then they need to seek medical attention.
🔺Cortisone injections are helpful in providing temporary relief and may cause side effects. The side effects are mostly minute and in case of severe side effects, then the person should seek medical help.
Some of the side effects which a patient can face are:
◼️Cortisone flare reaction: After getting an injection, a person can experience discomfort within 24-48 hours after the injection. Icing helps with the temporary flare of pain at the injection site.
◼️Loss of fatty tissue: Taking high doses of cortisone injections makes the skin fat at the particular area or leads to dimpling of the skin.
◼️Increase blood sugar levels: Steroids increase blood sugar levels and patients who are having diabetes should consult their doctors as it can lead to some serious health issues.
◼️Change in skin pigmentation: Skin pigmentation changes and leads to permanent changes in skin color.
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