Abstract
This paper describes a new heating method for treating osteoarthritis (OA) inside a knee using a resonant cavity applicator. OA is a common musculoskeletal disorder that causes pain, stiffness, swelling, and loss of function in a joint. As the disease progresses, the inflamed synovium invades and damages the cartilage and bone of the joint. In clinics, there are several treatments for OA, for example, surgical operation, thermal therapy, and chemotherapy. Physical methods, such as thermal therapy, with hot packs, paraffin baths, ultra-short waves, infrared lamps and microwave diathermy system are widely used for musculoskeletal disorders in the clinic. However, the skin penetration depth of these methods is less than approximately 20 mm. It is not easy to heat the affected part of the human knee. For an effective treatment of osteoarthritis, the deep seated joint cavity region in the human knee must be heated between approximately 36 and 38 ℃. In the previous study, a resonant cavity applicator for thermal therapy of OA was proposed. In this study, we proposed a new heating method using a resonant cavity applicator with adjustable electromagnetic shield. From the estimated results, it was found that the proposed heating method is able to heat the deep tissue with the leg in a bent position.
