Added advantage of ayurvedic management in a series of 100 cases of osteoarthritis of the knee joint : a shared experience between orthopaedic and ayurvedic faculty

Abstract EN

Osteoarthritis of the knee joint is a disease due to the uncoupling of balance between cartilage degeneration and regeneration in the elderly, causing knee joint pain, deformity and limp.

About half of the population after the fifth decade of life have symptoms of osteoarthritis of the knee.

The treatment of osteoarthritis varies from conservative to operative procedures.

As yet, no long-term definitive conservative management has been described.

We compared the results of osteoarthritis among 100 patients in the Orthopaedic outpatient department who either underwent (42 patients) or did not undergo (58 patients) added ayurvedic panchakarma (snehan and swedan) therapy.

Patients’ visual anologue scores and satisfaction scores were assessed before the treatment and after 2 and 4 weeks.

Patients with early to moderate grade of osteoarthritis treated with added ayurvedic therapy showed better improvment in terms of pain and mobilization compared with the patients treated with analgesics only.