You may have heard about arthrosis, Osteoarthritis, or Osteoarthritis and thought that it refers to different diseases. These terms are used to designate a degenerative and progressive disease of the articular cartilage, which is nothing more than the wear of the cartilage between the bones and by bone alterations, such as osteophytes which we know as the “beak of a parrot.”
Its importance is because it represents one of the five leading causes of incapacitation of non-hospitalized adults and is much more frequent than many people imagine, as many feel pain in their hands, wrists, knees, and even the spine, but they always bear the pain until it becomes disabling and unbearable.
How Does This Disease Happen, And What Are The Main Risk Factors?
A joint may suffer acute trauma and immediately present symptoms, or chronic trauma, a repetitive activity that exceeds the joint’s ability to absorb the impacts. Therefore, joint damage is widespread in textile industry workers, who develop arthrosis in the hands and develop nodules on the tips of the fingers, called Heberden’s nodule, in farmers who often have joint arthrosis (between the thigh and the pelvis) and in mineworkers who have arthrosis of their knees and spine.
In addition to trauma, another critical risk factor is aging, as the reduction in the capacity of cartilage cells and the loss of sensitivity to bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments is physiological, which increases joint instability. Search for hip replacement (การ ผ่าตัด เปลี่ยน ข้อ สะโพก เทียม which is the term in Thai)
Obesity can also be considered an extremely relevant risk factor, as more than half of the population of our country is overweight, which overloads the joints and slowly and silently damages the articular cartilage.
How Do I Know If I Have Osteoarthritis? What Are The Symptoms?
The main symptom patients report is joint pain, which starts little by slightly and increases in intensity over the years. Other common complaints are creaking and cracking in the joints, stiffness, especially when waking up in the morning, loss of joint mobility, and swelling when local inflammation occurs.
Is There A Possibility Of Developing Osteoarthritis In Adolescence?
Many people have some evidence of Osteoarthritis on x-rays (usually by age 40), but only half of these people have symptoms. This joint disorder usually starts when a person is in their 40s and 50s and affects almost everyone to some degree in their 80s. Before age 40, Osteoarthritis happens more often in men than women, usually because of injury. However, from 40 to 70, women develop the disease more often than men; only after 70 years of age does the disease develop in both sexes equally.
