Home | Recommend This Site | Bookmark This Page
Osteoarthritis: Definition And Symptomsby Any Safarodiyah, MD Osteoarthritis is a chronic joint disease signed by degeneration of joint cartilage and bones near by it that may cause pain and stiffness. This disease happens usually at age over seventy. Men and women both may suffer from it, but men usually suffer at younger age. In normal condition, our joint has minimum degree of friction. There is a surface cartilage that covers the joint. Therefore, it won’t be easy to be worn or torn, except if it used too much or is being injured. The problem that causes osteoarthritis is due to more wearing away (degradation) and less repair of the cartilage surface. It may be started when an abnormality happed to the cells that form cartilage, such as collagen and proteoglycan. The cartilage then grows too much but in the end it becomes thinner and forms fragments of the surface. The bone becomes fragile. There are bony projections on the surface of the joint. They called bone spurs or Osteophyte. These bone spurs are responsible for pain in arthritis. Osteoarthritis classified into: - Primary Osteoarthritis, if the cause is unknown - Secondary Osteoarthritis, if it is caused by another disease such as Paget’s disease or infection. If we conduct x-rays for people over forty years old, most of them will show osteoarthritis, especially in the joints that sustain bodyweight such as hip joint, but it still painless. Osteoarthritis often attacks finger interphalangeal joint, thumb basal joint, neck joint, low back joint, hip joint, and knee joint. The symptoms show gradually. At the beginning, it only affects one or a few joints. Later, it will be very disturbing. The pain will get worse if the person does sports. Some of the patients feel stiffness of the joint when wake up in the morning or when doing other passive activities. This stiffness usually disappears within thirty minutes after the joint actively moves. Damage caused by osteoarthritis progressively deteriorates, so the joint becomes difficult to move and in the end it will be desisted on bended position. New formation of bone, cartilage and other tissue may cause swelling, and harsh cartilage may cause clatter sound when the joint moves. In some other joint (for instance knee joint), the ligaments that supports the joint are stretched, so the joint becomes unstable. Touching or moving it may result in awful pain. Osteoarthritis of back bone is commonly happened. The main symptoms are low grade back pain and stiffness. Patients usually do not complain much about these. |
|||
Related Topics on Osteoarthritis: Definition And Symptoms
|
|||
|
|
Health & Personal Care 
Gourmet Food
All About Baby
Top Classical Music
10 Home & Garden
Hot Kitchen & Houseware
Sport & Outdoors
|