Objective: This study aims to investigate whether integration of traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine has advantage in achieving the improved diagnosis and treatment of knee osteoarthritis.
Methods: 90 patients with knee osteoarthritis were selected from The Department of Minimal Invasive Joint of The Third Affiliated Hospital of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine from June 2013 to June 2015. They were divided into 3 groups with 30 cases per group in accordance to the syndrome differentiation of traditional Chinese medicine. The patients underwent arthroscopic surgery, and we categorized the patients having the same characterization in each group, and those having distinct difference into the three groups. Based on the arthroscopic analysis, we performed analysis of statistical data in order to analyze the relation between knee osteoarthritis under arthroscope and traditional Chinese medicine syndromes.
Results: There are three syndromes according to traditional Chinese medicine that can be categorized into various different groups. The synovial proliferation can be seen mostly in the syndrome of stagnation of blood stasis. The slight damage of knee joint cartilage can be seen in the syndrome of yang deficiency and cold stagnation, the severe one in the syndrome of kidney-marrow deficiency. We found that there are different pathological expressions with the various degree of the tissues damage at the knee and we categorized the knee according to their syndrome.
Conclusion: For knee osteoarthritis, different syndromes of traditional Chinese medicine presents different tissues pathological changes at the knee joint under arthroscopy, which will provide objective basis for the diagnosis of this medical condition.
Keywords: Knee osteoarthritis; arthroscopic surgery; orthopedic diagnosis; traditional Chinese medicine syndromes.