Athrosamid Hydrogel Injection

A snowHead

Has anyone had experience of these injections for bone on bone problems in knees? If so, have they been successful in releving severe pain? Thanks.

A snowHead

relieving

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

No - but I have had Hyaluronic acid injections :
No noticeable effect for me - but another consultant told me HA would be a waste of money as the knee was too worn..

May well be different for you though - no harm in trying ?

Cortisone did work ; lasted about 3 months (but you are limited to the number of these you can have..)

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Thank you for your reply.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

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Thanks. What are PRP injections? Cortisone has already been used and the effect has worn off and can't be repeated again.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

I hope i am not side topic-ing, but i recently read something about stem cells being used in knees to regenerate cartlidge, would that help ?

After all it is free

Will look into it. Wait for knee replacement has taken years.

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Thanks

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

I’m not convinced that arthrosamid is a good idea.

Firstly the data they publish on their website all the studies are done by the same author. “Proof” is not that convincing when only one person has published all the favourable results.

It cannot be removed once in, so if there is a problem such as infection that is a real worry.

Hyaluronic acid is widely available and cheaper.

PRP lots of negative studies but many poorly designed i do think it works in early to moderate OA.

“Stem cells” be careful, there are a lot of crooks out there.

Jonathan Bell

snow reports

Thank you so much for responding. I will certainly heed your warnings on this matter.

@hils, @albob,

Be careful of the very niche clinics that are springing up everywhere.
The names of the clinics are frequently simply designed to enable easy “click bait” style of marketing using words like regeneration, preservation etc.

Why do they exist?

Surgical fees have been largely frozen by insurers since late 90’s. Outpatient delivered services such as injections are now almost as profitable and can be delivered in a surgeon owned centre without having to share the fees with a hospital. The hopistal part of a fee is always a multiple of the surgeons fee for carrying out the procedure. It’s ok to build your own clinic but the above underpins the economics.

These regeneration/ joint preservation services are offering no op injections but are then a sales funnel to capture uninsured patients for eventual surgery. Insurers frequently do not pay for this stuff. Nothing wrong with offering to manage patients non operatively but i ( and many of my colleagues) question whether the injectable offering is evidence based. I have also seen examples of surgery or injections being offered when i do not believe it is warranted.

Sports medicine doctors/ pain specialists and some physiotherapists are offering “injection clinics”. That again is fine as long as the injection being offered is warranted and evidence based. However if you set your self up as an injection clinic there is s risk everyone gets an injection because that will be consistent with your brand.

Some also need to make sure they are always at the pioneering end of the market so may be tempted to offer what ever is new simply to stay relevant.This may be before there is strong and irrefutable evidence that the product is a wonder drug, eg so called stem cells. They like to present themselves as having remarkable insights that the rest of the profession would be able to see if only they were as knowledgable or “professorial” as the founders. They hint that their colleagues will eventually catch up but in the mean time you can get the cutting edge stuff right here for only ten grand.

It may turn out that some of the stuff being offered does eventually become widely accepted as successful. However, alot of experimental stuff will have been injected into people that we then prove doesn’t work. Proof in medicine, rightly, sets the bar very high and it can takes many years for a new treatment to be accepted as proven. It would need multiple publications preferably of well designed randomised controlled trials which themselves are difficult to fund. This last point is why you always needs to see who funded the trail and if the lead author is in the pocket of the company or patent owner.

You have to therefore take a view with these new products on whether you are happy to take the risk but it is certainly an area that attracts some of the less savoury individuals.

I’m not saying that all these clinics are dodgy as some will be highly credible and honest in what they offer but be careful.

Jonathan Bell

You know it makes sense.

Thank you again for this.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@Jonathan Bell, Interesting comment about the hyaluronic acid. My various x-rays and scans following my knee injury in Germany back in April, have shown, alongside torn acl and median meniscus with a popliteal cyst, some osteoarthritis, I guess in my later 60`s thats not so surprising.

I am trying to navigate my way through what seems like a minefield of alternatives if you rely on the internet! For now, all my medical advisors are happy that I have chosen to pursue a non-operation route in respect of the knee injury, and seem impressed with the progress I`ve made. I`d also like to address the arthritis issue and do all I can to mitigate further deterioration.

I was lucky enough to be able to access professional advice privately very soon after the injury to start building up the strength in the knee asap. The fact that my nhs doctor and physios are surprised at how well I`ve done makes me really cross that the nhs does not offer exercise and strengthening advice as soon as it should! I was lost! It took ages to see the nhs MSK specialist and ages for the mri. I was sent home from Germany in a full leg brace with anti-coagulant jabs with no idea what I should or should not be doing and no clear route through the nhs.

The cyst is the main problem now I think. It ruptured, painfully, maybe partially, I think a couple of weeks back, no idea why, but seems to have reformed. And I still need to work on strengthening my thigh muscles and relaxing the hamstring. The inability to fully squat and the occasional weakness going down a step are what I need to improve!

A snowHead

@CaravanSkier, i have similar problems to you -- do you mind sharing your exercise/strengthening regime !!

My Cyst burst many years ago - felt like I had been shot in leg, fluid shooting down the calf muscle (it has also reformed - currently not painful, but varies depending on how much exercise I have been doing...!)

A snowHead

@CaravanSkier, @albob, you might be interested in my experience.

I had a Baker's cyst that burst in 2016 while putting on my ski boot. I'd had swelling issues with my right knee for the 5 years prior due to some slack from a partially torn ACL and suspected torn medial meniscus and had also an exploratory arthroscopy in 2014 where the lateral meniscus was cleaned up a bit. The surgery helped, but not enough. Basically, the more I skied, the more problems I got and more than one doctor told me I should pack up skiing.

I managed to ski the day of the cyst bursting because the boot was already on but after that I was done for the season. My calf looked like a rugby ball and a scan showed a lump of fluid 7cm x 2.5cm in the calf that had come out of the knee. This was in spring 2016 prior to my PRP injections which were administered over the summer/autumn. Since the PRP injections the cyst has never come back and my swelling issues have also improved dramatically.

What I find these days is that I get some minor swelling for the first 1-2 weeks skiing but then the knee seems to accept the increased activity level and after 2-3 weeks, the swelling goes completely and I have full range of movement. This is almost the complete opposite to how it was previously where the more I skied, the more it swelled, culminating in the Baker's cyst.

I've had no other surgery since so my conclusion is that this improvement is solely down to the PRP injections. Incidentally, I also deliberately don't take any anti-inflammatories because the surgeon who originally treated me with PRP (and is a genuine world expert on the subject) told me that using anti-inflammatories would stop PRP working. FWIW, he was also very against HA injections which he basically said were a pointless short-term only treatment.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@Je suis un Skieur, Thanks

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@Je suis un Skieur, Interesting thank you.

@albob, Sorry somehow I missed your comment.

My current exercise regime, having progressed from easier movements, is really very simple, some exercises lying down:

one with rolled towel under ankle, pushing knee down, hold for up to 30 sec. relax and repeat, 2 to 3 times, 2 to 3 times a day

next with towel just above knee, push thigh down into towel lifting heel as high as poss without loosing contact with the towel. Lower gently and repeat up to 10 times, 2 -3 times a day.

Then in a sitting position on chair: (again all 2 - 3 times a day)

extend leg in a controlled way, hold for up to 5 sec, repeat up to 10 times

place rolled towel between legs at hip width, squeeze towel, extend both legs, repeat up to 10 times

with chair against wall and folded arms, stand up, sit down, slowly, up to 10 times.

Sorry if my explanations of the exercises don`t make sense, but I hope they do. These are 'more advanced' than the ones I started with and actually quite strenuous when I do them correctly.

However, my take on everything I`ve been told has been to try to do all normal activities in the most normal way possible. To think how I am walking, to think how I sit down and get up, to think about how I manage stairs. To try very hard not to change how I am doing things because my knee feels weak. In doing normal actions in a normal way I am likely to be strengthening the muscles that need to work harder to compensate for the knee damage. This way of thinking has really helped me over the last couple of decades to keep active given the damaged ligaments in my hips.

I`ve been given the all clear to return to my water based exercise classes this week, which I`ve been doing for over 10 years or so following advice from my consultant re earlier hip ligament & tendon problems and am hoping and expecting further improvement will follow. We`ll see Smile

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

@CaravanSkier, Thanks for taking the time - and your explanations do make sense !!

Thanks also to @Jonathan Bell for the information

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@albob, No problem.

I have read much information on here about knee damage and have found other peoples stories very useful.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Strengthening has good evidence that it is helpful to many with a worn knee. It doesn’t change the wear but can lessen the pain.
Other areas to focus are to improve your metabolism by improving your diet as carrying extra and the sort of poor metabolism that is associated with weight gain/ pre diabetes and diabetes all drive levels of inflammation up.
Exercise is almost alway safe and you are not going to wreck your knee!

Jonathan Bell

After all it is free

@Jonathan Bell,

@Jonathan Bell, Thank you.

I am very interested in the whole relationship between diet, pre-diabetes markers, gut biomes etc and inflammation. There seems to be a whole lot of new research beginning in these areas and it will be interesting to see where it leads

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@CaravanSkier, this is exactly where GLP-1 drugs (ozempic etc) plug in and why it is proving to be so successful.

Help!!

Athrosamid Hydrogel Injection

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