Some doctors and patients say they may have found a way to ease arthritis pain in the knees without drugs or surgery. The makers of the BioniCare System say it mimics the naturally occurring signal of a healthy knee joint.
Forty-six-year old Felisha Johnson says a few months ago she was crippled by arthritis in her knee. She even had to use a walker and didn't like her options.
"I''m too young for a knee replacement, " she insisted.
Her doctor, Dr. John McConnell, recommended the Bionicare System as an alternative. He said the knee brace shifted weight off the affected areas of her joint.
Felisha got immediate relief.
"I could get up and walk and I was thanking God I could get up and walk on my own, " she said.
The system also generates a low-level pulsed electrical signal to the knee which may provide additional benefits, according to Dr. McConnell.
"What we believe happens is the electrical stimulus that the generator produces affects cartilage cells, and causes the cartilage cells to turn on anabolically and causes them to form new cartilage," he said.
Dr. McConnell cautions it's too soon to tell if Felisha will still need a knee replacement down the road.
"I won't say that we can eliminate the need for it at some point, but if we postpone it and buy the patient a number of years of function with their own knee, that's preferable to plastic and metal resurfacing," he said.
One another advantage: the device is easy for patients to put on and take off.
A long-term study by Johns Hopkins University found that after using the BioniCare System for an average of 11 months, 62% of severe knee osteoarthritis patients were able to avoid a total knee replacement during the next four years as compared to only 7% of the matched control group.
For more information: BioCare.com
