Osteoarthritis and Hip Replacement Surgery Baltimore

While there are a few different conditions that may lead patients to choose hip replacement surgery Baltimore, osteoarthritis is by far the most common of them.  While arthritis, generally speaking, indicates inflammation in the joints, osteoarthritis is less about inflammation and more about simple wear and tear on the joints as folks get older.  It is not so much a "disease", per se, as it is a fact of aging (which, incidentally, is the biggest risk factor for osteoarthritis).

As people age, all of their tissues become more dry and less elastic.  This is especially true of cartilage, which is the special tissue that is positioned at the moving parts of all joints in the body.  As the cartilage dries out, it also becomes eroded by the ongoing movement of the joint.  If the patient lives long enough, there may eventually be no cartilage remaining at all, resulting in a painful bone-on-bone situation.

Why Hip Replacement Surgery?

While osteoarthritis can occur in any joint in the body, it is most common in the weight-bearing joints.  These include the knees and hips.  Therefore, these two large joints are the most common targets of complete joint replacements.

As people in the United States are living longer and longer and expecting a better quality of life as a result of rapidly advancing medical technologies and materials, more individuals are receiving hip replacement surgery Baltimore MD https://www.medstarunionortho.org.  In fact, more than half a million people will get hip replacements just this year.

Recommendations for surgery are typically made after other, less invasive treatments of osteoarthritis have been tried.  These may include lifestyle changes like weight loss, certain pain medications, and even steroidal medications being injected directly into the painful joint.

Doctors try to encourage patients to wait as long as possible before having a joint replacement because eventually, all artificial joint devices will fail.  The goal is to have the life of the implant be longer than the life of the patient, or to have the patient undergo as few subsequent replacement surgeries as possible within their lifetime.  In the end, though, this is a wonderful option for individuals suffering from chronic pain or lack of mobility due to osteoarthritis, and will continue to improve as hip replacement surgery Baltimore procedures continue to improve.