Professor David Hunter

Rheumatologist

What is OA?

Osteoarthritis is the structural failure of any joint in the body typically comes about as a consequence of destructive change that can occur usually in weightbearing joint where that overwhelms the joint's capacity for repair, and it usually manifests as structural changes which you might see on Imaging and in addition to that a person may complain of pain and limited function.  Often times osteoarthritis is also referred to as degenerative arthritis or wear and tear arthritis the degenerative usually implies that this is an just an age related problem and this can occur in teenagers, so it's not just an age related problem and wear and tear also suggest it's just related to destructive processes, but I think it's really important that people understand it's not just wear and tear but the joint does have an innate capacity for repair and in this context that's overwhelmed by those destructive processes so wear and tear and degenerative should not be used to refer to osteoarthritis.

Symptoms of OA

The symptoms for osteoarthritis usually consist of pain limited function and contextually also disability as a consequence of that. Pain in the first instance usually manifest as pain related to activity so for example a person might walk up and down stairs get it up and down from a chair and feel pain related to that. The function usually comes about as a consequence of that pain and a person finding it difficult to do typical activities of daily living as a result of their pain. So, again it might be getting in and out of a car taking a walk playing golf playing tennis things like that. At best osteoarthritis may manifest just as a structural change on an image such as an x-ray and a person may not have any pain or limited function as a consequence of that. So, just to paraphrase that about 50% people that have structural change on an X-ray will not have any symptoms related to the Joint that's affected. At worst a person may present with complete pain and loss of function as a consequence of their joint disease specifically pain at rest, pain while they're trying to sleep that is obviously severely disabling as a consequence of that.

Living with OA

 It’s important for everybody with us to artist understand that this is a chronic disease there is no cure at present and that the average time course for a person with this disease is usually in the order of about 20 to 30 years that they will live with this disease. Everybody with osteoarthritis should better understand the disease and how best to manage that and it's critical that they understand that  that makes a big difference to their whole life course and their disease course long term one  great way for them to do that is to get engaged with my myjointpain.org.au which has recently been set  up with Arthritis Australia to help to facilitate better understanding of the disease and how best  that person can actually manage their symptoms and the disease course long term. One other way to do that is to get engaged with the forum specifically trying to understand the impact this has on other people who have similar problems to you.