Why Not Wash Out the Osteoarthritic Knee?

Clinical Efficacy of 2-Needle Joint Lavage for Osteoarthritis-Related Knee Pain and Predictors of Response Based on Knee MRI Osteoarthritis Knee Score: A Medical Records Review Study

BACKGROUND

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is notoriously difficult to treat. Pain is the key symptom for patients to seek medical attention. This study aimed to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of joint lavage (JL) for OA-related knee pain and to explore the knee pathological changes detected by magnetic resonance imaging that may affect the prognosis of patients who received JL.

METHODS

Eighty-two hospitalized patients who were diagnosed with knee OA and received JL in our department were finally enrolled in this study. The patients' clinical data including Numeric Rating Scale (NRS), Western Ontario and McMaster Osteoarthritis Index pain subscale, analgesic medication usage, adverse events, and magnetic resonance imaging data of the affected knee joint scored by the MRI Osteoarthritis Knee Score were recorded and analyzed.

RESULTS

The NRS scores significantly decreased after JL and remained steady until 6 months ( p < 0.001). The Western Ontario and McMaster Osteoarthritis Index pain scores and the percentage of patients who needed analgesic medication significantly decreased at 6 months compared with baseline ( p < 0.001). At 6 months after JL, 51 of the 82 patients experienced ≥50% improvement in their NRS scores (effective). Multivariate binary logistic regression analysis revealed that duration of pain (odds ratio [OR], 1.022; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.003-1.042; p = 0.024), bone marrow lesion score (OR, 1.221; 95% CI, 1.028-1.450; p = 0.023), and cartilage loss score (OR, 1.272; 95% CI, 1.021-1.585; p = 0.032) significantly influenced the therapeutic efficacy of JL.

CONCLUSIONS

JL treatment can significantly alleviate the OA-related knee pain in at least 6 months. JL tends to provide limited benefit for patients with long duration of pain, serious bone marrow lesions, and severe cartilage loss.

What Bedside Skills Could the Modern Rheumatologist Possess? Part II. "Certain Technical Procedures"

ABSTRACT

Rheumatologists have never been reluctant to adopt procedures that might enhance their diagnostic or therapeutic powers. Their propensity to penetrate the joints of the patients they were treating set them apart from the general internist. Since the 1980s, when a chance to look inside the joints they were treating attracted a few rheumatologists, other things that could be done at the bedside emerged with now an array of bedside procedures that could be part of a rheumatologist's skill set. Besides gains in diagnosis and/or therapy, each constitutes a chance to restore the physical contact between physician and patient, riven by factors of the last decade, such as electronic medical records and COVID. With such contact so important to satisfaction of the patient and physician alike, acquisition of proficiency in certain technical procedures described herein offers one path to begin restoring rheumatology to the richly fulfilling practice it once was.

Regarding Arthroscopy: Can Orthopedists and Rheumatologists Be Friends?

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE

Rheumatologists' interest in arthroscopy began before the 1980s, when many era practitioners began to take up the procedure in earnest. Some of the important players in pre-World War II explorations of arthroscopy were rheumatologists, and the father of modern arthroscopy Makei Watanabe counted many rheumatologists among his postwar students, who were publishing about arthroscopic insights into rheumatic conditions in the 1960s and 1970s. We chose to review this evolution to demonstrate the diverging interests of rheumatologists and orthopedists in arthroscopy and emphasize the chances for reconciliation and cooperation. Methods involve our personal recollection and review of the literature.

RESULTS

Guidelines for the practice of arthroscopy were published by the American Rheumatism Association (now the American College of Rheumatology) 7 years before similar guidelines appeared from the Arthroscopy Association of North America. American rheumatologists ceased arthroscopy when controlled trials showed no effect in osteoarthritis beyond placebo and biologics for synovitis virtually eliminated situations in which synovectomy might be considered. The research potential of arthroscopy has been realized mainly by European rheumatologists, although the ultrasound-guided biopsy is supplanting arthroscopy as means to secure synovium for investigation, despite the advantages of the latter, such as the ability to obtain larger amounts of tissue, select tissue based on macroscopic appearance, sample multiple area in the same joint, and deliver the potentially therapeutic effect of washout. New miniscopes suitable for office use could restore some of the lagging interest in arthroscopy for investigation. Orthopedists have generally been resistant to rheumatologists doing arthroscopy but would not be sharing any turf with rheumatologists using the miniscope.

CONCLUSIONS

We hope that we orthopedists and rheumatologists could be friends as we enter this new phase of arthroscopy as we use the technique for different purposes.

Will rheumatologists ever pick up the arthroscope again?

Conditions prompting physicians and surgeons first adapting endoscopes to peer into joints were mainly the sort of synovial conditions that would concern today's rheumatologists. Rheumatologists were among the pre-World War II pioneers developing and documenting arthroscopy. The post-War father of modern arthroscopy, Watanabe, found rheumatologists among his early students, who took back the technique to their home countries, teaching orthopedists and rheumatologists alike. Rheumatologists described and analyzed the intra-articular features of their common diseases in the '60s and '70s. A groundswell of interest from academic rheumatologists in adapting arthroscopy grew considerably in the '90s with development of "needle scopes" that could be used in an office setting. Rheumatologists helped conduct the very trials the findings of which reduced demand for their arthroscopic services by questioning the efficacy of arthroscopic debridement in osteoarthritis (OA) and also developing biological compounds that greatly reduced the call for any resective intervention in inflammatory arthropathies. The arthroscope has proven an excellent tool for viewing and sampling synovium and continues to serve this purpose at several international research centers. While cartilage is now imaged mainly by magnetic resonance imaging, some OA features - such as a high prevalence of visible calcinosis - beg further arthroscopy-directed investigation. A new generation of "needle scopes" with far superior optics awaits future investigators, should they develop interest.