Abstract
Objective: There is growing evidence that injection in the knee joint under the guidance of ultrasound (US) leads to accurate needle placement and results in a clinically significant improvement compared with traditional palpation-guided methods. This study was conducted to assess the usefulness of the corticosteroid injection method in medial collateral ligament (MCL) with protrusion of the medial meniscus using US for patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee.
Methods: A total of 55 outpatients with knee OA were prospectively randomized into two groups, a medial collateral ligament (MCL) injection group and an intra-articular injection group, according to the approach employed for the corticosteroid injection. At the final assessment, the subjects were asked how many days they needed to take nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) due to pain related to knee OA during the 4-week study. The number of days the subjects needed NSAIDs was compared between the MCL and intra-articular injection groups.
Results: Four patients withdrew from the study, and so the 51 subjects who completed the 4-week study were evaluated. There were significant differences demonstrated between the intra-articular injection group (n=26, 15.3±7.7 days) and the MCL injection group (n=25, 9.1±7.4 days) in terms of the number of days the subjects needed NSAIDs (p=0.004).
Conclusion: The protrusion of the medial meniscus with displacement of the MCL is strongly and independently associated with weight-bearing pain in knee OA. The results from the present study indicated that corticosteroid injection in the MCL is useful to relieve acute pain due to knee OA.
