A number of methods may be used to cure osteoarthritis of the knee. When a person is first diagnosed to be suffering from knee osteoarthritis, normally the doctors will recommend a diet, work-outs and a medication schedule to alleviate the pain and inflammation in the affected knees. In case these methods do not provide enough relief to the patient, the physicians will next recommend Synvisc injections to alleviate the knee pain.

Synvisc Injections

Synvisc injections are basically osteoarthritis injections that are directly administered into the affected knee to restore its cushioning and lubricating properties. These knee injections replace the damaged knee fluid with a substance similar to the synovial fluid found in the knee joints. Synvisc is basically a flexible and glutinous substance made from hyaluronan that is naturally present in normal joint fluid. It is one of the hyalurates that is used in viscosupplementation. Although viscosupplementation has been used for osteoarthritis treatment since the 1970s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Synvisc injections for treating osteoarthritis only on August 8, 1997. It may be mentioned here that viscosupplementation denotes the medication process of directly administering a knee injection where pain, swelling and/ or fluid buildup is found around the knee. Synvisc injections are approved for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis in patients who have failed to respond to more conservative therapy, such as use of anti-inflammatory medications, activity modifications, ambulatory aids and cortisone or steroid knee injections. Use of Synvisc injections for other joints is presently being probed by scientists. At the same time, it needs to be noted that the Canadian Synvisc is considered a treatment or therapy and not a drug.

Treatment

Normally, Synvisc injections are administered once a week with an interval of seven days between two sessions for a total of three knee injections. It has been established that Synvisc injections provide up to six months of osteoarthritis knee pain relief with just three injections. In addition, Synvisc injections also help in delaying the total knee replacement surgery in patients suffering from acute knee osteoarthritis. Use of Synvisc injections not only alleviate the knee pain, but also improve the knee movement and mobility in knee osteoarthritis patients. As mentioned earlier, Canadian Synvisc, which is one of the most inexpensive knee injections, replaces the damaged knee fluid and functions as a knee ‘lubricant’. In order to avail the best results from Synvisc injections, it is essential to remove the diseased osteoarthritic synovial fluid from the knee joint before administering the first knee injection.

Synvisc injections provide relief through ‘viscosupplementation’, the term used for this type of treatment. The objective behind using Synvisc injections is to restore the natural elasticity and viscous properties of synovial fluid. Hyaluronan present in Synvisc injections is responsible for the lubricating properties of normal joint fluid. The lubricating affects of joint fluid enables the cartilage surfaces of joints to glide upon each other in a smooth manner. When Synvisc injections are directly administered into the affected knee joint, it helps to restore the joint lubrication. In addition, hyaluronan in Canadian Synvisc is also known to have anti-inflammatory properties, and may help protect remaining cartilage in the joint.

Clinical Trial

Clinical trials undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of Synvisc injections included a single-center study of 56 women and 52 men with an average age of 62 years old. All the participants in the clinical trial with synvisc injections suffered from osteoarthritis in one or both knees and had failed treatment with cortisone knee injections. During the trial the all participants received three intra-articular Synvisc injections at an interval of one week each and the assessment of the patients were done in the first, third, sixth, twelfth, fifteenth, and eighteenth months.

The scientists used the Hospital for Special Knee Surgery Rating Scale to assess the pain alleviation and aptitude to evade total knee replacement surgery among the patients. The findings of the trials hinted that 72.6 per cent of patients treated with Synvisc injections avoided the total knee replacement surgery during the course of the study. In addition, no serious or long-term side effects from the Synvisc injections were noted during the study. However, eight patients developed acute inflammatory reactions after the administration of the Synvisc injections.

Side Effects

So far, no study involving the use of Synvisc injections has found any serious adverse aftereffects associated with the use of this knee injection. When reactions to Synvisc injections occur, they tend to be flare-ups of knee inflammation that usually alleviates within a few days. These outbreak reactions occur in only three per cent of all Synvisc injections. Hence, treatment with Synvisc injections has been known to be safe.