Steroids And Hyaluronic Acid For Arthritis

Steroid injections do improve knee symptoms in the short term, but they lead to a sooner onset of needing a knee replacement because the arthritis is there. The steroids decrease the pain and inflammation from it, but also thins out the tissue and the cartilage gets thinner faster. So the use of steroid actually hastens the time at which you'll be worse. So this is a situation where the drug is actually worse than the disease because it makes it worse faster. So I'm not an advocate of using steroids at all, even though that had been the only option we had, let's say 30 years ago. Then there's something called hyaluronic acid or hyalurons and these are something that's. It's akin to the fillers that we use in our practice cosmetically. But it's a non cross linked lubricant of the joint. When it gets injected the joint, they usually do three treatments. You get some improvement for a few months, pretty expensive, no long term effects. And it doesn't actually heal the joint, but it does give some symptomatic relief.