New osteoarthritis knee treatment could help you avoid major surgery

More than 27-million Americans suffer with the daily pain and stiffness of osteoarthritis. It’s a condition that worsens over time, with few options to slow it down, but there could be a potential solution.

Retired firefighter Chuck Stenger has dealt with knee pain for over a decade, “Every time I would kneel down or go to climb a ladder at the fire department, or doing squats when I was working out, I could feel it, but I worked with it.”

When he learned he had progressing osteoarthritis, he thought he was headed toward a total knee replacement, but a new clinical trial may allow him to avoid major surgery with a simple device.

Dr. David Flanigan implanted the device in Stenger’s knee at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, the first surgery of its kind in the U.S.

“If it works for me, maybe it’ll work for a lot of other people,” Stenger said.

The Calypso Knee System is attached outside of the knee joint and works as a shock-absorber, reducing pressure and creating a cushion similar to what cartilage provides in a healthy joint. The clinical trial will examine how the device may relieve pain and slow the progression of osteoarthritis.

Flanigan says, “Take some of that load off that inner portion of the knee and allow that patient now to have increasing function, less pain and really to delay a total knee arthroplasty for, hopefully, years.”

As for Stenger, he’s hoping he can get back to his active lifestyle free of knee pain,”I’ve been telling a lot of people about it.”

And he hopes it can help you down the road.

More than 700,000 knee replacements are performed every year in the U.S., a number that’s expected to triple over the next decade.