All that you need to know about arthrosis - its causes, signs, varieties and diagnostic methods - will help to detect the ailment in the early stages. And effective treatment methods will allow you to get rid of this disease. Arthrosis is characteristic of people over 40 years old. However, impartial statistics show in recent decades a tendency to rejuvenate-men and women aged 30-35 years have begun to suffer.
What is arthrosis?
Arthrosis is a chronic joint disease accompanied by pathological changes in Hyaline cartilage, and subsequently in adjacent tissues, a joint capsule and a synovial shell. The defeat is dystrophic and degenerative in nature, which leads to a change in the structure of articular tissues, the loss of their functionality. In accordance with the data of the same statistics, arthrosis is subject to 12% of the total population of the planet. From 62% to 65% of all episodes of the disease falls on people over 60 years old. Another 30-35% of cases of joint damage to this pathology are in patients aged 40-60 years. And about 3% are young people age 20-40.
The danger of the disease of joints is manifested by the fact that it is practically not completely cured. Although when diagnosing pathology in the early phase of progression, it helps to preserve the functionality of the joint.
Most often, cases of lesion of arthrosis in such joints are diagnosed:
- Carpal joints;
- cervical and lumbar spine;
- knee joint;
- hip joint;
- shoulder joint;
- ankle joint;
- Metatarsophalangeal joint.
The disease is more characteristic of the female population - representatives of the female half of the population suffer from this pathology more often at an older age. Arthrosis of the interfalance joint occurs in women 10 times more often than in the male population.
The likely consequences of arthrosis
With timely treatment, the disease is manifested by less developmental intensity and, as a result, a stop of degenerative and dystrophic changes. This means that timely surgical or therapeutic intervention allows you to maintain the functionality of the joint, normal gait and eliminates soreness.
At the same time, tightening with treatment leads to frequent and stable pains, lameness, swelling of the joint. Progressive pathological changes in the tissues deprive the joint of its usual functionality. In a short time, in the absence of competent treatment, arthrosis quickly flows into a chronic form. Such consequences give rise to the need for constant medical observation and regular treatment of the disease during exacerbation periods.
In order to avoid the consequences and complications with the first suspicions of its development, you should contact medical specialists. In the early phases of progression of the treatment of arthrosis of the joints, a rheumatologist is engaged in the treatment. In chronic form, the treatment of this pathology is carried out by an orthopedic traumatologist.
Types of arthrosis
This pathology of joints has several forms and varieties that differ in such criteria:
- causes (primary and secondary form);
- stages of arthrosis (three stages of progression are classified);
- localization of pathology (place of manifestation of the disease and type of joint);
- Localization form (generalized and local form);
- The course of the disease (acute or chronic).
At the place of manifestation of symptoms, hip, knee, cystic, elbow, shoulder, ankle, cervical arthrosis are distinguished.
According to etiological signs, pathologies of the primary nature are classified, developing in themselves without any prerequisites, and a secondary disease. In the latter case, damage to the joint occurs due to the development of infectious diseases in adjacent tissues, mechanical disorders, the loss of physiological functionality of the joint, as well as a result of a progressive inflammatory process, hypothermia, injury or other factors.
Classification in the form of localization involves local and generalized damage to joints. In the first case, the disease and its symptoms cover a small part of the joint or its individual tissues and the components. With a generalized form, several joints are affected or one of them with full coverage of all joint tissues.
At different stages of the progression of the disease, a varying degree of intensity is manifested. At the same time, symptoms and complications can be expressed brighter, more or less dynamically leak the process of fabric destruction and impaired joint functionality.
Depending on the course of arthrosis, they distinguish:
- acute shape;
- chronic form.
The acute form is usually manifested by increased intensity of the development of symptoms and their severity. Painful sensations appear more strongly, and morphological changes in the tissues proceed more dynamically. In a chronic form, the course of the disease is slowly, it is manifested by separate signs during periods of exacerbation and is practically not subject to cure.
Degree of disease
During the disease, medicine distinguishes three stages that have differences on the signs of the disease, the intensity of damage and localization. At the same time, distinguishing in all three stages relate to the types of fabrics that suffer pathological changes.
- The first degree of development of arthrosis of joints is the initial phase of the disease. It is characterized by a slight lesion of cartilage tissue and the loss of physiological functions in collagen fibers. At the same time, at the first stage, minor morphological disorders of the bone tissue and structural changes in the synovial fluid are noted. The cartilage of the joint is covered with cracks, the patient has a slight pain in the place of localization of pathology.
- The second degree is the development of arthrosis with an increase in dynamics. This stage is characterized by the appearance of stable pain, chroma. Notable morphological and dystrophic cartridges of cartilage are noted, during diagnosis, bone growths are revealed. Osteophytes are formed - bone growths that are visible during a visual examination of the destruction site. At the same time, the processes of degenerative changes in the synovial capsule occur, which leads to its structural depletion. The disease in this phase can often aggravate and be regular. The pain gradually becomes constant.
- The third degree is active progression. At this stage, the synovial fluid is almost completely absent due to its degeneration, and bone tissues abrupt about each other. The joint mobility is almost completely absent, the pain becomes more tangible. Cartilage tissue is also absent due to degenerative and atrophic changes. Treatment of the third degree of arthrosis of the joints is considered impractical.
In addition to these three degrees of development of pathology, there is a final stage - irrevocable destruction of all joint tissues. In this phase, it is impossible not only to conduct productive therapy, but even to remove the pain syndrome.
The inflammatory process usually begins with a second degree of damage, in rare cases, in the absence of medical intervention - at the first stage. Subsequently, it becomes more difficult to stop it, and this can lead to secondary pathologies, the development of pathogenic microflora in the place of localization of the disease.
To exclude serious consequences, treatment should begin from the first degree, and the use of intensive care methods. At the last stage associated with the complete destruction of cartilage tissue, only one methodology for riding the patient from pain and immobility of joint is allowed - endoprosthetics with complete or partial replacement of the components of the joint.
Causes of the disease
The reasons may be primary and secondary factors. In older people, the disease can occur with mixed etiology, that is, in the presence of primary and secondary causes. Their complex manifestation exacerbates the course of arthrosis and reduces the dynamics of recovery.
The main cause of most types of this pathology is a violation of metabolism. Changed metabolic processes lead to morphological abnormalities in cartilage and synovial fluid. As a result of this, the changes relate to the entire joint, and are often accompanied by the origin of inflammatory local foci.
In addition to metabolic pathologies, the causes of arthrosis of the joints are:
- traumatic damage to individual tissues or the entire joint. This includes dislocations, fractures, ligaments, ruptures of meniscus, penetrating wounds. This reason is more common in people involved in sports, or whose activities are related to dangerous working conditions and physical exertion;
- An inflammatory process is a factor often acts as a secondary reason. Inflammation usually develops in patients suffering from gout, psoriasis, rheumatic abnormalities, autoimmune pathologies. The joints of the joint are subject to patients in the stage of exacerbation of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, chlamydia, Staphylococcus and other contagious diseases;
- The consequences of the aggravated form of respiratory diseases - flu, acute respiratory viral infections, acute respiratory infections;
- increased body weight of the patient - with disproportionate load on the joints of their tissues, suffer constant mechanical effects, which leads to morphological deviations and the destruction of the structure of the cartilage;
- excessive hypothermia leading to the destruction of the integrity of the cartilage tissue and the loss of the structure of synovial fluid;
- thyroid diseases.
A separate place in the etiology of arthrosis is a genetic factor. It is the genetic anomaly that is able to provoke dysplasia of joint tissues and the disorder of the physiological functions of collagen fibers, responsible for the flexibility and mobility of joint.
At the same time, other concomitant factors are the reasons for the development of this pathology: vitamin deficiency, intoxication due to intake-quality products or excessive overdose of drugs, the patient’s advanced age, pathological processes of the blood-formation and blood flow, hormonal abnormalities, and diseases of the reproductive system of infectious origin.
The mechanism of progression of the disease
When any of the causes that provoke the disease of the joint with arthrosis appears, pathological processes begin to develop in it. The mechanism of their progression is not fully studied, but the main stages of official medicine are known.
At the initial stage, the structure of the cartilage tissue and abnormal changes in the synovial fluid occurs. All this proceeds due to violations of metabolic processes in which joint tissues do not receive the necessary components in sufficient quantities, or are deprived of some of them.
Next, the elasticity of collagen fibers and the flexibility of the cartilage is lost, due to the fact that in the body, with a lack of nutrients, hyaluronic acid does not have time to be produced, which provides the softness and flexibility of the structural composition of the Collagenic fiber. The cartilage gradually dries, becomes brittle and cracks. The liquid in the synovial capsule is gradually depleted and subsequently completely disappears.
On the cartilage fabric, roughness, solid bone neoplasms are formed. At the same time, the deformation of other joint tissue develops, their pathological degeneration, dystrophy and the loss of physiological activity.
For the patient, these changes mean the appearance of pain, lameness, and immobility of the joint.
Symptoms of arthrosis
Signs of arthrosis of the joints appear from its first degree, although sometimes they are not so pronounced. Characteristic phenomena for all stages of arthrosis are:
- pain syndrome;
- crispy sounds when moving;
- inactivity or complete decrease in joint mobility;
- swelling;
- Conformation of the joint.
Pain
Pain usually occurs during movement. With intense physical exertion, painful sensations intensify and acquire a persistent trend. With all types of arthrosis, any place of their localization, pain is sharp.
In the initial phase, pain is weakly expressed, more often they appear in the daytime. Usually the pain is short -term and subsides at rest. In chronic form and with intensive progression of the acute form of pain, the pain syndrome manifests itself more often, has an increased period of manifestation, often bothers even at rest at night.