Our joints are made up of living tissues. However, at some point they sometimes fail to correct on their own in time and people begin to suffer so much that joint replacement surgery is needed. Obviously, the problem is more common in older people, but as scientists at the University of Queensland have discovered, something is causing knee replacement surgeries to happen much sooner.
Knee replacement surgery is not a simple procedure and it can sometimes take up to 6 months for a patient to recover. Image credit: BruceBlaus via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
It’s not a simple worn-out joint – joint replacement is often needed because of conditions like osteoarthritis. It’s just that these surgeries aren’t usually necessary for young people. Scientists analyzed the data of 56,217 knee replacement surgery patients for osteoarthritis and found that 57.7% of them were obese. Furthermore, obesity seems to be reducing the age of knee replacement surgery, especially in women.
It’s no surprise that obesity has terrible health effects. Knees take a lot of pressure, eventually causing damage. Scientists found that 55-64 years old women who were obese were 17.3 times more likely to need knee replacement surgery than women of normal weight. In the group of men of the same age, this number is 5.8 times. And, as mentioned above, obese people are often significantly younger when they need new knees.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is actually the most common form of arthritis. It occurs when cartilage cannot repair quickly enough and joint tissues are permanently damaged. The good news is that it is possible to reduce the risk of arthritis and its complications. Dr Chris Wall, the study’s principal investigator, said: “Moderate weight loss has been found to effectively reduce symptoms of OA of the knee, and obese patients maintained a 10% loss of muscle weight. significantly improved pain and function.
In Australia, where this study was conducted, the situation is pretty dire. One-third of the adults there were obese. Those with the highest BMI ratios in this study were, on average, seven years younger when they had their knee replacements, compared with people of normal weight. This means that in the future Australia will have a huge problem with how conventional knee replacements work.
Knee replacement is a rather complicated surgery. Knees are obviously very important joints, and replacing them with prosthetics requires cutting and drilling bones, attaching metal parts, aligning everything – it’s invasive and painful. It takes about 6 weeks until the patient can engage in moderate physical activity while swelling can take up to half a year to subside. Therefore, if you are obese, you should really find a way to lose weight.
Source: University of Queensland
