Orthopedic News for Patients
Orthopedic News for Patients - Bone & Joint Pain
News for patients with orthopedic conditions & bone and joint pain.
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THURSDAY, Jan. 5, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Everybody believes running can leave you sore and swollen, right? Well, a new study suggests running might actually reduce inflammation in joints.
"It flies in the face of intuition," said study co-author Matt Seeley, an associate professor of exercise sciences at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. "This idea that long-distance running is bad for your knees might be a myth."
Seeley and his colleagues reached their surprising conclusion after analyzing the knee joint fluid of several healthy men and women between the ages of 18 and 35.
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THURSDAY, Nov. 17, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Recovery from a sprained ankle often involves some kind of physical therapy, but a new study questions the usefulness of that approach.
In a Canadian study of more than 500 people suffering from such injuries, about the same number of people achieved "excellent recovery" at six months -- whether or not they'd received standard physical therapy.
"There was not a clinically important effect with the standardized physiotherapy regimen provided to our participants," concluded a team led by Brenda Brouwer. She's with the School of Rehabilitation Therapy at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.
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WEDNESDAY, Nov. 9, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- High-frequency electrical stimulation of the spinal cord may relieve severe chronic back pain more effectively than conventional low-frequency stimulation, a new study finds.
In initial testing, the device -- called the Senza system -- reduced leg and back pain scores by at least half in 80 percent of patients. After two years, 76 percent of the patients with chronic back pain still had reduced pain, as did 73 percent of patients with chronic leg pain, the researchers found.
"Over the last 40 years, we have used low-frequency stimulation for leg and back pain, and it was relatively successful with about 50 percent of patients getting about 50 percent of their pain relieved," said lead researcher Dr.
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TUESDAY, Oct. 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- For older adults, a fractured hip is often life-changing: The majority will never return to their former levels of independence and physical activity, according to new research.
"We all hope for full recovery, but less than half recover to their previous function after a hip fracture," said Dr. Victoria Tang, lead author of the study.
The chances of recovery among hip-fracture patients older than 85 with dementia or other health problems are even lower, the study authors found.
"By being able to set realistic expectations of the likelihood of recovery, as family members, we can take steps to plan and prepare for future care needs of the patient," added Tang.
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Ishman Woodard volunteers for START in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Daniel Hamm and Jovita Newman monitor his progress.
Three times a week, thousands of people with knee osteoarthritis lift weights, have their blood pressure checked, and walk around a track at gyms in central and western North Carolina.
Some of them also take nutrition classes and listen to lifestyle lectures. Others count their calories.
But everyone has their blood work done, has their leg strength tested, gets bone density scans, and fills out quality-of-life questionnaires.
These North Carolinians are part of clinical trials led by Stephen Messier, PhD. He is the director of the J.B.
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THURSDAY, Oct. 20, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Using cells from the cartilage in patients' noses, Swiss doctors have successfully made patches to treat 10 adults whose knee cartilage was damaged by injury.
Two years after the transplants, most of the patients grew new cartilage in their knees and reported improvements in pain, knee function and quality of life.
"We have developed a new, promising approach to the treatment of articular cartilage injuries," said lead researcher Ivan Martin, a professor of tissue engineering at the University of Basel. The articular cartilage is the tissue that covers and protects the ends of the knee bones, and injuries to it can lead to degenerative joint conditions like osteoarthritis.
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WEDNESDAY, Oct. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Even if they know the pills are fake, chronic back pain sufferers may get relief from placebo drugs, a new study indicates.
Researchers found that patients who knowingly took a placebo pill while undergoing traditional treatment for lower back pain had less pain and disability than those who received traditional treatment alone.
"These findings turn our understanding of the placebo effect on its head," said Ted Kaptchuk, a joint senior author of the study and director of the Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
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TUESDAY, Oct. 18, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- A new type of plaster cast might help older adults avoid surgery for unstable ankle fractures, researchers say.
"Older adults -- those over 60 -- are suffering an increasing number of ankle fractures from leading more active lifestyles and the rising prevalence of osteoporosis," said study author Keith Willett.
"However, we know that older patients have disproportionately poor outcomes, and their quality of life can suffer as they lose mobility," added Willett. He is a professor of orthopedics, rheumatology and musculoskeletal sciences at the University of Oxford in England.
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THURSDAY, Oct. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Severe joint pain plagues an increasing number of aging, often arthritic Americans, a new report finds.
In 2002, about 10.5 million people in the United States said they battled severe joint pain, but by 2014 that number had jumped to 14.6 million, said researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC team defined "severe" joint pain as discomfort measuring 7 or more on a 1-to-10 score on a questionnaire, with 1 being no pain and 10 being "pain and aching as bad as it can be.
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