Cartilage plays important anatomical roles, including offering structural support and minimizing bone friction within joints. For this reason, cartilage injuries are serious and should not be neglected.
When we think of structural injuries we tend to think of broken bones, sprained muscles, or torn ligaments - cartilage is often forgotten when it comes to thinking about structural injuries. But cartilage is actually a unique anatomical structure with particular purposes that can compromise health and function when impaired.
For that reason, if you’ve experienced a cartilage injury, it is important for you to take the injury seriously and seek out proper treatment. That means you’ll likely be asking “where do I get cartilage injury treatment” and seeking to learn more about cartilage itself. Rothman Orthopaedic Institute is here to provide the best articular cartilage injury treatment options available.
The Anatomical Role of Cartilage
There is a great deal of variety between different cartilage injuries as there are a large number of cartilage types. These include:
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Knee cartilage
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Hip cartilage
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Spinal cartilage
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Shoulder cartilage
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Elbow cartilage
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Hand cartilage
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Wrist cartilage
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Foot cartilage
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Ankle cartilage
As you might expect, a knee cartilage injury treatment will look very different from that of an ankle cartilage treatment or a patella cartilage injury. In all of these injuries, however, the essential cartilage function that is being compromised is remarkably similar.
Certain types of cartilage, such as nose or ear cartilage, provides structural support with a higher degree of flexibility than bone offers. This is essential in anatomical structures that are prone to bending or pressure that might cause damage in the more inflexible bones.
Cartilage has other important roles besides structural support, however. Articular cartilage is particularly critical to healthy skeletal functioning; this special type of cartilage is a type of dense tissue that covers bone endings within joints. Because cartilage is smooth and softer than bone, articular cartilage allows joints to move with ease and minimizes the friction resulting from bones moving against each other.
When cartilage injuries occur, they impair and compromise the proper operation of these essential functions - structure and joint friction reduction. Which brings us back to our original question: Where do I get cartilage injury treatment? Now let’s take some time to answer that question and inspect what cartilage injury treatment looks like.
Cartilage Injury Treatment at Rothman Orthopaedic Institute
The specialists at Rothman Orthopaedic Institute offer the best cartilage injury treatment available; furthermore, they have numerous locations where you can pursue articular cartilage injury treatment or treatment for the particular type of cartilage injury you have experienced.
As previously mentioned, treatment options depend upon the type of injury sustained and the type of cartilage that has been affected. In many cases, such as certain knee cartilage injuries, non-surgical treatment options will be deemed effective for treating cartilage damage. In these cases, a combination of rest, icing, compression, and elevation - as well as physical therapy and medication--may fully heal the cartilage damage that has occurred. In the knee example, a non-surgical treatment plan might entail knee cartilage injury exercises to treat injury symptoms.
In more serious cases, surgery may be necessary to effectively treat a cartilage injury. One common surgical procedure to treat articular cartilage injuries is known as an arthroplasty; this operation can effectively address articular cartilage injuries - and is just one surgical treatment option available to those are suffering from the sometimes debilitating symptoms associated with cartilage injuries. Your specialist will be able to determine the optimal treatment option--surgical or non-surgical - to treat your particular injury.
Rothman Orthopaedic Institute’s locations are centered around the Pennsylvania - Delaware - New Jersey tri-state area and span as far as the Jersey Shore. So if you’re asking “where do I get cartilage injury treatment?”, rest assured that there is effective, proven, and trusted treatment available close to home from the experts at Rothman Orthopaedic Institute.
Visit us here or contact us at 1-800-321-9999.
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