Reply From ABCMD response on Friday February 12, 2010 at 12:22 AM

Thank you for the question Lauri. Injection of joints with Hyaluronic-acid, also known as HA, is a form of treatment used to slow down cartilage loss in patients with arthritis and to provide some pain relief with the viscosupplementation that you mention in your question. Think of it as putting oil in your car. Some patients receive a benefit from these injections in the form of pain relief and some are even able to put off having surgery. However some may get no benefit at all. Not to mention, these injections are not completely safe as there is a real risk of infection of the joint. To answer your final question, the reason you are not a great candidate for the HA injections is you already have "bone on bone arthritis." These injections cannot get cartilage to grow back as many people believe, but instead only slow the process in early or even moderately early arthritis. Your arthritis is very severe as it sounds and unfortunately cannot be improved with these inections.