Most of the older generation who suffer from arthritis need a new knee because their old one is destroyed by the disease. To give a new knee, you need to perform a knee replacement surgery. This is known as the knee arthroplasty.
Cost reduction in India
The presence of modern technology and the expertise of the Indian surgeons have made one thing possible. That is to reduce the cost of medical treatment in India. This reduction is not a mere reduction of a hundred or a thousand rupees but an entire reduction making the cost a fraction of the original cost.
The knee replacement cost in India is Rs 5.43 lakh while the cost in the US is Rs 32 lakh. This is a substantial saving if you do the surgery in India. There are two kinds of knee surgeries. One is the total knee surgery where the entire knee is replaced. The other is the partial knee replacement surgery. In this, only the damaged portion of the knee is removed and replaced by the artificial prosthesis.
Alternatives to knee surgery
You have several alternatives to knee replacement surgery. These include knee fusion or arthrodesis of the knee. Here the joint itself is eliminated by fusing the two bones coming to the joint. This joint fusion surgery helps relieve pain due to arthritis.
The second type of treatment involves replacement of the cartilage. Knee cartilage replacement therapy falls into three categories.
- Laser therapy methods
- Microfracture surgery
- Chondrectomy
Laser therapy methods involve removal of the diseased cartilage and reshaping. Effort is made for inducing proliferation of cartilage. However, this method is in the experimental stages and it does not allow for large changes to be made.
In microfracture surgery, abrasive procedures such as drilling and chondroplasty along with spongialization is used. This method evolved twenty years ago, it uses the phenomenon of spontaneous repair of the cartilage tissue. Cartilage production in this way helps to an extent.
In Chondrectomy, the diseased cartilage is removed and this stops the inflammation and the pain. This method uses debridement which does not have any medical backing. It is a temporary method to relive pain.
Other treatment options
You have a variety of other methods that include use of specialized braces, use of uni-compartmentalised arthroplasty, arthroscopy, and osteotomy. The risks associated with knee replacement surgery are infection, loosening, Osteolysis, and stiffness. Most of the hospitals in India have a cent percent success rate for knee surgery. Even then, one must be careful when one chooses a hospital for their knee replacement surgery.
Due to the low cost of knee replacement surgery in India and the high level of expertise of the Indian surgeons, there is a huge influx of medical tourism into India. We have seen people come from Nigeria, the United States, Bangladesh, and Pakistan for treatment to India.
People stay in the hotels and take treatment because the hotel stay is well organised and the local people take good care of the medical tourists. The hospital infrastructure is excellent and the patients testify to the high quality of the treatment they receive here.
