Everything you need to know about arthrosis - its causes, signs, varieties and diagnostic methods - will help detect the disease 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 and women from 30 to 35 years have begun to suffer.
What is arthrosis?
Arthrosis is a chronic joint disease accompanied by pathological changes in hyaline cartilage and, later, 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 joint tissues, the loss of their functionality. According to data from 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 over people over 60. Another 30-35% of cases of joint damage to this pathology are in patients aged 40 to 60 years. And about 3% have young people aged 20 to 40 years.
The danger of joint disease manifests itself because it is hardly completely healed. Although by diagnosing pathology in the early phase of progression, it helps to preserve the functionality of the joint.
Most of the time, cases of arthrosis injury are diagnosed in these articulations:
- Carpal joints;
- cervical and lumbar spine;
- knee joint;
- hip joint;
- shoulder joint;
- ankle joint;
- Metatarsophalangic joint.
The disease is more characteristic of the female population - representatives of the female half of the population suffer from this pathology with more frequently advanced age. Interphalance articulation arthrosis occurs in women 10 times more often than in the male population.
The probable consequences of arthrosis
With timely treatment, the disease manifests itself by less intensity of development and, as a result, a stop of degenerative and dystrophic changes. This means that surgical intervention or timely therapy allows to maintain the functionality of joint and normal march and eliminates pain.
At the same time, tightening with treatment leads to frequent and stable pain, lameness, swelling of the joint. Progressive pathological changes in tissues deprive the articulation of its usual functionality. In a short time, in the absence of competent treatment, arthrosis flows rapidly in a chronic form. Such consequences give rise to the need for constant medical observation and regular treatment of the disease during periods of exacerbation.
To avoid the consequences and complications with the first suspicions of your development, you should contact medical experts. In the early stages of the progression of joint arthrosis treatment, a rheumatologist is involved in treatment. In chronic form, the treatment of this pathology is performed by an orthopedic traumatologist.
Types of arthrosis
This joint pathology has various forms and varieties that differ in these criteria:
- causes (primary and secondary form);
- Stages of arthrosis (three internships of progression are classified);
- Pathology location (place of disease manifestation and type of joint);
- Location form (widespread and local form);
- The course of the disease (acute or chronic).
At the place of symptom manifestation, the cervical arthrosis of the hip, knee, cystic, elbow, shoulder, ankle and cervical.
According to etiological signs, primary pathologies are classified, developing in themselves without prerequisites and a secondary disease. In the latter case, articulation damage occurs due to the development of infectious diseases in adjacent tissues, mechanical disorders, the loss of the physiological functionality of the joint, as well as a result of a progressive inflammatory process, hypothermia, injury or other factors.
The classification in the form of location involves local and widespread damage to the joints. In the first case, the disease and its symptoms cover a small part of the joint or its individual tissues and components. With a widespread form, several joints are affected or one with full coverage of all joint tissues.
At different stages of disease progression, a variable degree of intensity is manifested. At the same time, symptoms and complications can be expressed brighter, leaks more or less dynamically the process of fabric destruction and impaired joint functionality.
Depending on the course of arthrosis, they distinguish:
- acute form;
- chronic form.
The acute form usually manifests itself by increasing the intensity of symptom development and its severity. Painful sensations appear strongerly and morphological changes in tissues continue dynamically. Chronicly, the course of the disease is slowly, manifested by separate signs during periods of exacerbation and is hardly subject to cure.
Degree of disease
During the disease, medicine distinguishes three stages that have differences in signs of the disease, the intensity of damage and location. At the same time, the distinction in the three stages is related to the types of tissues that undergo pathological changes.
- The first degree of development of joint arthrosis is the initial phase of the disease. It is characterized by slight cartilage tissue injury and the loss of physiological functions in collagen fibers. At the same time, at the first stage, small morphological disorders of bone tissue and structural changes in synovial fluid are observed. The articulation cartilage is covered with cracks, the patient has mild pain in the place of location of the 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 observed during diagnosis, bone growths are revealed. Osteophytes are formed - bone growths that are visible during a visual examination of the place of destruction. At the same time, degenerative changes in synovial capsule occur, which leads to their structural depletion. The disease at this stage can usually aggravate and be regular. The pain gradually becomes constant.
- The third degree is active progression. At this stage, synovial fluid is almost completely absent due to its degeneration and abrupt bone tissues on each other. 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 articulation of the joints is considered impractical.
In addition to these three degrees of development of the pathology, there is a final stage - irrevocable destruction of all articular tissues. At this stage, it is impossible not only to perform productive therapy, but even remove pain syndrome.
The inflammatory process usually begins with a second degree of damage, in rare cases, in the absence of medical intervention - in the first stage. Subsequently, it becomes more difficult to stop it, and this can lead to secondary pathologies, the development of pathogenic microflora at the disease location site.
To exclude serious consequences, treatment should start from the first degree and the use of intensive care methods. In the last stage associated with the complete destruction of cartilage tissue, only one methodology is allowed to walk in the patient of pain and immobility of the joint - endoprostrate with complete or partial replacement of joint components.
Causes of the disease
The reasons may be primary and secondary factors. In the elderly, the disease can occur with mixed etiology, that is, in the presence of primary and secondary causes. Its 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. Altered metabolic processes lead to morphological abnormalities in cartilage and synovial fluid. As a result, changes are related to the entire joint and are often accompanied by the origin of inflammatory local outbreaks.
In addition to metabolic pathologies, the causes of joint arthrosis are:
- traumatic damage to individual tissues or all articulation. This includes displacements, fractures, ligaments, meniscus ruptures, penetrating wounds. This reason is more common in people involved in sports or whose activities are related to dangerous working conditions and physical effort;
- An inflammatory process is a factor usually acts as a secondary reason. Inflammation usually develops in patients suffering from gout, psoriasis, rheumatic abnormalities, autoimmune pathologies. Articulation joints are subject to patients at 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;
- The increased body weight of the patient - with disproportionate load in the joints of their tissues, undergoes constant mechanical effects, which leads to morphological deviations and the destruction of the cartilage structure;
- Excessive hypothermia, leading to the destruction of cartilage tissue integrity and loss of synovial fluid structure;
- Thyroid diseases.
A separate place in the etiology of arthrosis is a genetic factor. It is the genetic anomaly capable of causing joint tissue dysplasia and the disorder of the physiological functions of collagen fibers, responsible for the flexibility and mobility of the articulation.
At the same time, other concomitant factors are the reasons for the development of this pathology: vitamin deficiency, intoxication due to ingestion or excessive drug overdose products, patient advanced age, blood flow pathological processes and blood flow, hormone abnormalities and infant -breeding system diseases.
The disease progression mechanism
When any of the causes that cause roar disease with arthrosis appears, pathological processes begin to develop in it. The mechanism of its progression is not fully studied, but the main stages of official medicine are known.
At the early stage, the cartilage tissue structure and abnormal changes in synovial fluid occurs. All of this continues due to violations of metabolic processes in which joint tissues do not receive the necessary components in sufficient quantities or deprived of some of them.
Then the elasticity of collagen fibers and cartilage flexibility are lost due to the fact that in the body, with a lack of nutrients, hyaluronic acid has no time to be produced, which provides the smoothness and flexibility of the structural composition of collagenic fiber. The cartilage gradually dries, becomes brittle and cracks. The liquid in the synovial capsule is gradually exhausted and subsequently disappears completely.
In cartilage fabric, roughness, solid bone neoplasms are formed. At the same time, the deformation of other joint tissues develops, their pathological degeneration, dystrophy and loss of physiological activity.
For the patient, these changes mean the appearance of pain, lameness and immobility of the joint.
Arthrosis symptoms
The arthrosis signs of the joints appear from their first degree, although sometimes they are not so pronounced. The 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 effort, painful sensations intensify and acquire a persistent tendency. With all types of arthrosis, any location place, the pain is clear.
In the early stages, pain is weakly expressed, more often they appear during the day. Usually the pain is short and disappears at rest. In chronic form and with intensive progression of the acute form of pain, pain syndrome manifests itself more frequently, has an increased period of manifestation, usually bothers you even at night rest.