Joint or knee pain, regardless of the type, can be emotionally draining. Arthritis, including its most common forms, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis—is one of the most common sources. In the United States, knee osteoarthritis is a common form of osteoarthritis present. These injuries also result in significant chronic pain.
Surgical procedures like total knee replacements and total joint replacements are common treatments in the United States for eliminating knee pain. Each year, over 750,000 of these surgeries are performed in the United States.
Swelling, discomfort, and stiffness can occur in any part of a joint, including the connective tissues and structures that attach to it. Other common symptoms include general fatigue, immobility, and physical weakness. These symptoms not only disrupt your daily life but also make it difficult to live a fulfilling life.
4 main injections for treating knee pain
Fortunately, there are other options for pain relief besides over-the-counter and prescription medications. Some of the treatments for knee pain include weight loss, exercise, physiotherapy, medications, and surgery. If oral medications don’t relieve your knee osteoarthritis pain, your doctor may recommend injecting medication directly into the joint
When it comes to treating knee pain, injection therapies can help to eliminate or significantly reduce pain over time. The best injection for you will depend on where your joint pain is coming from and what’s causing it.
Different knee joint diseases cause pain, knee injections are effective to treat pain. The treatment conditions will determine the type and frequency of injections. The doctor will recommend a treatment plan based on the diagnosis and severity of the disease. Your doctor may recommend the following injections to treat your knee pain depending on your needs.
- Corticosteroid Injections
Corticosteroid injections are referred to as cortisone or steroid injections. They are anti-inflammatory drugs that can alleviate pain, swelling, and inflammation. They’re the most common knee injections for osteoarthritis pain.
When you are stressed, your adrenal glands release cortisol into your body. Injectable cortisone is synthetic cortisone that functions similarly to cortisone in the body but is much more powerful. A cortisone injection is an option for people who want immediate, temporary relief from knee arthritis pain.
Before injecting the corticosteroid, a small amount of anesthesia will be injected into your knee. The anesthesia can provide short-term pain relief in the knee, but it wears off after a few hours. You may feel pain during this time until the corticosteroid injection kicks in two to three days later.
These injections can help relieve pain and reduce symptoms for six weeks to six months after the procedure. Despite the fact that the injections are not effective for everyone. Due to the risk of side effects, you will usually only receive two or three injections per year.
- Hyaluronic Injections
Hyaluronic acid is a naturally-occurring lubricant that helps joints function properly. These injections are gel-like substances that are able to treat knee joint pain in patients with osteoarthritis. Viscosupplementation injections are another term for these injections.
A hyaluronic acid injection introduces lubricant fluid into the knee joint. The goal is to lubricate the knee joint temporarily, reducing pain and inflammation, improving function, and possibly slowing the degeneration process. The injection aids in the smooth functioning of the joint.
Your doctor will draw a few tubes of your blood and run it through a device to separate the platelets during this procedure. After the circulation of the platelets throughout your body, they inject into the affected area. The activation of platelets initiates and increases reparative cells, allowing the wound to heal faster.
Hyaluronic acid injections generally take longer to take effect than cortisone injections, but the benefits may last longer. Any significant improvement could take up to four weeks to notice, and the effects could last anywhere from two to six months. Hyaluronic acid injections should be repeated every six months.
- Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Injections
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a remedy for a variety of orthopedic problems. PRP is a platelet cell concentration that extracts from your blood. These platelets contain growth factors that could aid in the healing of chronic injuries. It is a type of prolotherapy injection that can help with osteoarthritic knee pain.
Growth factors are chemical messengers that tell the body to start healing. The goal of injecting PRP into areas of injury is to stimulate and optimize your body’s ability to heal chronic conditions. PRP is high in platelets, other blood cells important in healing, and growth factors.
Finding a doctor who offers PRP injections can be difficult. However, orthopedic physicians who specialize in the treatment of chronic sports injuries are most likely to offer these. Most doctors administer one injection, but PRP injections are sometimes administered in a series over several weeks. PRP injections outperform the other two in terms of long-term pain relief, particularly at six, nine, and twelve months after treatment.
- Placental Tissue Matrix (PTM) Injections
The placenta, an organ that develops during pregnancy to provide oxygen and nutrients to a developing fetus, is the source of placental tissue matrices. Placental cells contain a high concentration of growth factors that promote healing.
PTM has anti-inflammatory properties, reduces pain, and aids in the restoration of damaged skeletal structures and tissues. The injection of placental tissue takes place into the body which contains nutrients that promote healing. They work in the same way as PRP injections. In osteoarthritis, injections of the placental tissue matrix have been shown to help heal damaged cartilage cells and delay cartilage changes.
Within two to six weeks of receiving prolotherapy injections, you may notice less pain and improved knee function. It also has effects that can last up to a year.
Conclusion
In short, the main theme of this topic is to describe the 4 functional knee injections for treating knee osteoarthritis. Knee osteoarthritis, like other diseases, is also a critical problem for your body. There are many treatments for reducing knee joint pain and swelling. It includes strong medicines, a healthy diet, proper physiotherapy treatment, knee injections, and surgeries. This article highlights the importance of different knee injections and their functions. Before going through a surgical process, healthcare experts or specialists usually recommend knee injection therapy. It is a less painful and cost-effective process than surgical treatments. There are different kinds of injections available but the main ones are corticosteroid and singjoint hyaluronic acid injection for knee pain. These both are common in knee injection therapy treatment.
