What is the Treatment Gap?
Treatment gap is when a patient has failed all conservative non-surgical treatments , continues with limitations and pain but are not ready for surgery. This is extremely common when it comes to osteoarthritis and two out of three surgeon believes that we have a treatment gap in early Osteoarthritis.
When a patient begins to experience symptoms of osteoarthritis which can include pain, swelling, stiffness, catching, weakness and difficulty performing daily functions. Usually non-surgical treatments are recommended first like physical therapy, bracing, medication’s, weight loss, activity modifications, injections, and sometimes even arthroscopic meniscectomies with debridements (clean up).
In most patients these alternative treatments can help manage the symptoms and provide the patients with a better quality of life and are still considered standard of care. When these treatments fails to provide relief, knee replacement is recommend.
But what happens if the patient is not ready for that invasive surgery?
Well, essentially these patients fall in the treatment gap. Whether it is due to being too young, or unable to take time off of work, or any other social economic reason. Then these patients fall into the treatment gap where essentially there is nothing that can help the patient’s symptoms until they reach a more reasonable age to perform a knee replacement.
These are the type of patients that have to rely on stronger pain medication, restrict their activities, or just put up with the pain.
Trying to find alternative options for patients in the treatment gap has not been easy and the medical community is extensively researching how to come up with better ways to help our patients, one of these options are OrthoBiologics.
In this video, Dr. Gonzalez from the Institute of Regenerative Orthopedics & Sports Medicine(IROSM), explains what the treatment gap is and here is using the Patient’s own fat to help a young patient that had been suffering with advanced osteoarthritis.
