Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most prevalent type of joint disorder. It is caused by the breakdown and eventual loss of the cartilage of one or more joints. For cases of OA that do not respond to conservative treatment, surgery, like hip replacement surgery for hip joints, is recommended.  However, an editorial written by a doctor says that many hip replacement surgeries are avoidable
 
OA, otherwise known as the “wear-and-tear” arthritis is idiopathic in nature. Several risk factors may cause the condition, doctors say.  However, no single risk factor is enough to cause OA.  Some of the identified risk factors include age, obesity, injury or overuse, genetics, muscle weakness, gender and other underlying diseases.  Having these risk factors does not necessarily mean that one will surely acquire osteoarthritis. 
 
Dr. Louis Pack, author of the book The Arthritis Revolution, clarified the difference between correlation and cause. Though age is believed to be the leading cause of OA, he pointed out in his editorial in CNN, that age only has a correlation to the condition. He added that age was not the reason behind the condition. Dr. Pack said that in almost all cases of osteoarthritis, only one hip or knee joint is affected. 
 
The risk-factor weight also has the same argument. Dr. Pack cited examples showing that some significantly overweight people have no joint problems. Others, who weigh far less, have arthritic joints.   He further stated that only one knee or hip is affected of the many overweight patients. Certainly, not only a single side bears the weight. 
 
What precedes the process of osteoarthritis is misalignment. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2001 says that a five-degree misalignment from the ankle to the hip increased the progression of OA three to four times.  The researchers from renowned Mayo Clinic supported this result in 2008. The study showed that a single degree of bad alignment from the ankle to the hip will result to a 55 percent increase on the risk of OA. "Age was only weakly associated with an increase risk," according to the study. 
 
Abnormal alignment is the root cause of osteoarthritis.  Researchers say that if medicine focused more on this than trying to produce other invasive methods of treatment, number of replacement surgeries will be cut to half. There will be reduction in the number of patients needing hip replacement surgery and possibly affected by DePuy hip replacement recall


Reference:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001460/
medicinenet.com/osteoarthritis/article.htm
mayoclinic.com/health/osteoarthritis/DS00019
arthritis.org/disease-center.php?disease_id=32http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/28/health/alignment-hip-replacements-pack/index.html

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