PEOPLE suffering from crippling knee osteoarthritis are now able to seek ‘game-changing’ treatment at a new early intervention clinic.

Dr Nikhil Pradhan is one of an increasing number of orthopaedic surgeons across the country to provide nSTRIDE therapy at his Cheshire Hip and Knee Clinic in Stretton.

This uses healthy extracts from patients’ own blood to uniquely target the causes of osteoarthritis as well as treating the pain itself.

Aimed at patients with mild to moderate disease, a single treatment at the Fir Tree Close site can provide effective pain relief and improved knee function for up to five years.

“Living with knee pain can be really quite debilitating, not just physically but psychologically too,” Dr Pradhan said.

“It can affect your ability to work, your family life and relationships.

“The management of pain is a ladder, with painkillers and physiotherapy at the bottom and surgical options finishing with a knee replacement at the top.

“But for a lot of people, there is an unbearable gap in between which has widened further because of the pandemic.”

Dr Pradhan says that before nSTRIDE the only thing he could offer these patients was opioid painkillers to mask the pain and steroid injections, which only provide very short-term pain relief.

In younger patients, they can also cause damage to cartilage.

However, nSTRIDE provides a potential solution, as for the first time consultants are looking at being able to treat the cause of pain rather than masking it.

Developed by Zimmer Biomet, the innovative nSTRIDE therapy is designed to treat the pain and uniquely target the inflammation which drives cartilage degradation and destruction in osteoarthritis.

Anti-inflammatory proteins and anabolic growth factors are taken from the blood, and after being concentrated in a centrifuge, are injected back into the knee.

Dr Pradhan, a specialist hip and knee surgeon, is seeing increased demand for nSTRIDE as the Covid pandemic continues to drive up waiting times for non-urgent orthopaedic surgery.

He added: “There is enough known now to say nSTRIDE has the potential to slow the rate of progression of early onset arthritis, as well as providing patients with a natural biological treatment that relieves their pain. Biologics really is the future.

“By having a dedicated clinic for people with knee osteoarthritis, we can ensure they get the speedy diagnosis and appropriate treatment at every stage of their disease.”

To find out more about nSTRIDE at Cheshire Hip and Knee Clinic, visit bit.ly/3mhAAhy