The knee joint because of its role as a major weight-bearing joint suffers wear and tear leading to degenerative arthritis or osteoarthritis of the knee joint. In simple terms, it implies the wear and tear of the cartilage plate in between the thigh and the leg bones leading to friction and pain when the bone’s surfaces rub against each other.

In younger age group patients major causes of knee pain include ligament tears or injuries secondary to accidental injuries or inflammatory arthritis conditions like Rheumatoid arthritis, Spondyloarthropathies, etc.

Interventional pain management options include Prolo-ozone therapy, Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy, Cooled Radiofrequency procedures which aim at reversing or stopping the degenerative conditions providing relief from pain and inflammation.

Prolo-ozone therapy/ Proliferative therapy

Prolo-ozone treatment involves the use of a mixture of Ozone gas and dextrose as proliferative agents to help in the regrowth of degenerated or injured soft tissues around the knee joint. Targeted injections around the selected tissue areas with the help of X-ray or Ultrasound aided with physiotherapy can be an excellent non-surgical alternative in selected cases.

Regenerative Therapy/ Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) Therapy

Regenerative therapy utilizes the patient’s own blood (after a process of centrifugation and separation of plasma components) to help in regenerating the degenerated tissues and ligaments. The growth factors in the patient’s own blood are separated and injected inside the knee joint with the help of image guidance to aid in the regrowth of degenerated tissues.

Radiofrequency procedures

Radiofrequency procedures involve numbing the nerves around the region of the knee joint to stop the signals of pain from being transmitted to the brain. This procedure may be combined with Platelet Rich Plasma injection to add on the regenerative aspect also.

All these procedures are daycare procedures and cost-effective which are done under local anaesthesia techniques so that the patients can return to their homes the same day without the need of any hospital admissions.

Cooled Radiofrequency procedures are an FDA approved procedure for the management of knee pain patients.

Even in a few subsets of post knee replacement having persistent pain post-surgery can achieve tremendous benefit with Cooled Radiofrequency procedures.