Will an injection to oil your dodgy joints save you from a hip op? | Mail Online

'I was really upset when they suddenly said the treatment had been withdrawn,' said osteoarthritis sufferer Valerie Megades of the injections

Every year thousands of people find their world shrinks a little.

Outings and exercise they would previously have welcomed become more and more of a chore, until one day even leaving home becomes an effort.

This is the effect of osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint condition which wears away the hips and knees of more than one million Britons and is the reason for the 120,000 joint replacement operations performed annually— a figure that is rising steadily.

Sometimes surgery to replace the joint can be almost as bad as the arthritis itself, because of the problems associated with recovering from the operation when overall fitness is deteriorating.

Exercise is a vital part of the rehabilitation process, but without someone at your side in case you fall, it can be a frightening prospect. As the arthritis worsens, people become more frail.

Forced immobility creates other health problems, such as potentially fatal chest infections, and for those who live alone there is no one to look after them while they re-learn to walk. Often recovery can take months rather than weeks.

Such are the difficulties affecting Valerie Megades, 64, a widow from Hither Green, South London, who lives alone in a second floor flat and whose only child, Simon, died two years ago from cancer aged 37.

For the past decade Valerie has suffered increasingly with arthritis in both her knees. Sometimes her joints are so stiff, she can barely make it downstairs to go shopping and she is on a constant diet of painkillers.

Although Valerie still manages to struggle out several times a week to visit her daughter-in-law and two young grandsons two bus rides away, the demands of post-surgery recovery seem overwhelming.

She has so far rejected the chance to be put on the NHS waiting list for knee replacement surgery, because of her fears about being able to recover.

Then last year Valerie,  a retired French teacher was offered an alternative - 'lubricating' injections of hyaluronic acid into the joints.

This substance mimics the natural joint lubricant, synovial fluid, which keeps joints moving freely; hyaluronic acid effectively cushions the bones.

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