The Latest Reason to Skip That Steroid Shot for Knee Pain

If you’re trying to fight inflammation in a bad knee by using drugs, opt for the milder, non-steroidal stuff.

That’s the takeaway from a study published this year in JAMA.

There were 140 subjects, average age 58. They had pain and inflammation because of knee osteoarthritis. For every three months over two years, the subjects received knee injections that consisted of either the corticosteroid triamcinolone or a placebo.

What researchers then found was rather surprising.

Knee pain declined slightly in both groups, but by about the same amount – so the steroid didn’t even outperform a saline placebo. However, those who got the corticosteroid injections had “significantly greater cartilage volume loss.”

The researchers’ conclusion doesn’t mince words: These findings do not support this treatment for patients with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis.

Controlling inflammation is good, but it’s probably a good idea to take a pass on steroids.

What Jane Brody Wishes She Had Known About Her Knees

Check out “What I Wish I’d Known About My Knees” by Jane Brody of the New York Times. It’s a very good article, and you can feel her weary skepticism shining through. Jane Brody has been through a lot trying to get rid of knee pain. For instance, in the 1990s, she wrote a flattering column about the potential of glucosamine. But alas, in the end the supplements didn’t work. She tried a lot of other things that didn’t work too before finally undergoing a double knee replacement.

Many of the procedures people undergo to counter chronic knee pain in the hopes of avoiding a knee replacement have limited or no evidence to support them. Some enrich the pockets of medical practitioners while rarely benefiting patients for more than a few months. 

I wish I had known that before I had succumbed to wishful thinking and tried them all.

She tried arthroscopic surgery for a shredded meniscus. She mentions a systematic review of 12 trials and 13 observational studies that determined that arthroscopic surgery to improve knee arthritis and tears in the meniscus offered no lasting relief or improvement in function.

She also tried hyaluronic acid when she was told her knee arthritis was bone on bone. But, she reports:

The painful, costly injections were said to relieve knee pain in two-thirds of patients. Alas, I was in the third that didn’t benefit.

One of the best parts of the article wasn't even in the article. I fished it out of the comment section. Note the underlined sentences. This commenter, presumably an orthopedic surgeon, is fully aware of the profit motive at work behind all those needless arthroscopic procedures:

I started my orthopedic residency in 1995. We had a monthly journal club where we met at a fairly expensive restaurant (paid for by pharmaceutical or joint replacement companies!) to discuss the articles in the latest orthopedic journals. 

The article that generated the most buzz was a double blind study of patients with meniscal tears. Half the patients got the actual arthroscopic repair, the other half underwent the same general anesthesia and had the same surgical incisions but no actual arthroscopy. Double blind means neither the patients or the surgeons knew which patients were in which group. No difference was seen in the two groups. Some protested that the study was unethical by subjecting the placebo group to the risks of general anesthesia and infection. In retrospect the same could have justifiably been said about those getting the actual procedure. 

Two decades plus, nothing has changed. Arthroscopy is the bread and butter for orthopedic surgeons. A general orthopedist might do a handful of knee replacements in a week while they do twenty scopes. The latter can be scheduled like a factory line, each scope taking less than half an hour to perform. Doesn't pay like a knee replacement but it's far less grueling on the surgeon (and the patient!). Far less likelihood of complications. 

Nothing's changed in 2+ decades, don't hold your breath waiting for the ortho docs to give up their bread and butter!

Something to keep in mind if a surgeon suggests going into your joint to "clean it up a little"!

Housekeeping Stuff: Second Edition of SMK, Spam Comments

I’m hoping to get a second edition of Saving My Knees out by the end of the summer, or early fall. The major reason for a new edition is to update a few things, such as how my knees have been since I wrote it (they generally feel great) and what I’ve learned since then (such as the envelope of function framework for understanding knee pain).

But not to worry: I’m not backing away from what’s contained in the heart of the book. I still think the program I followed made the most sense. I may have focused a bit too much on this idea of restoring my cartilage, but I will say: my cartilage was very crunchy before, and it isn’t any longer. So something apparently improved.

Now, on to the subject of what have become increasingly sophisticated spam comments:

I expect that the people who really need to read this won’t, because they don’t really read this blog. Rather, they’re like those people you see briefly in a neighborhood, stapling advertising fliers to a telephone pole, then moving on.

I realize there are ways of escalating against spam comments, such as (most severe) putting comments in a pen until a moderator (that would be me) can approve them. Then nothing that’s spammy gets in the comment section.

But honestly, I don’t think that’s good for people who want live back-and-forth discussions here, plus it’s not great for me either, having to constantly moderate. I’d rather jump in on my usual occasional basis and clean up the comments. So far it seems to be working.

What is a spam comment? This is a good question. As some of you may know, when my book first came out, I was accused of promoting it on the KneeGuru website and thrown out of their online community. In that case though, I was actively participating in the boards. I went on there and told my story and answered questions. Honestly, I strongly believed that I had a message that needed to be spread that I wasn't seeing anywhere else.

So back to the question: What constitutes a spam comment? What gets a comment deleted? Here are a few things I look for:

* Someone I’ve never seen on the site before, who posts once with a link, and that’s it. That's often a red flag.

* A comment that’s blandly approving (“This is a great post”) or that speaks in generalities but doesn’t really address the post above. Believe me, after a while, it gets easy to spot the spam comments where a person probably making $2.15 an hour in some Third World country is trying to engage superficially with the blog, all the time thinking, “Gotta get this link in.”

* A short comment that has a link, either embedded or at the end, to something like “orthopedic supplies.”

Basically, I apply the smell test to a lot of stuff. I hope I haven’t inadvertently deleted any legit comments. But I strongly suspect that if I have, the ratio is something like one good deleted for every 300 bad.

Anyway, that’s the end of the housekeeping stuff. A Happy Fourth to all!