Many patients tend to adopt conservative treatment to deal with femoral head necrosis because they are afraid of "hurting tendons and moving bones"
So what are the conservative treatments for femoral head necrosis? What effect does traditional Chinese medicine have on femoral head necrosis?
Wang Jian, deputy chief physician of the Department of Joint Surgery, Southern Hospital of Southern Medical University, said that many reasons may lead to femoral head necrosis. Traumatic factors such as fracture and dislocation can destroy the blood supply of femoral head. Some non-traumatic reasons can also destroy the blood supply of femoral head, such as the extensive use of certain drugs (usually glucocorticoids), alcoholism, abnormal coagulation function and so on.
In addition, some rare diseases may also lead to femoral head necrosis, such as decompression sickness of divers and sickle cell anemia.
However, not all patients with the above factors will have femoral head necrosis, and not all femoral head necrosis can find specific reasons. Femoral head necrosis without special reasons becomes idiopathic femoral head necrosis.
Two aspects of conservative treatment of femoral head necrosis
Conservative treatment of femoral head necrosis includes lifestyle adjustment and drug treatment.
All patients with femoral head necrosis, regardless of the stage of the disease, should pay attention to adjusting their lifestyle. Reducing weight-bearing activities will help delay the collapse of femoral head, relieve joint pain, and avoid the necrosis of femoral head caused by factors such as alcoholism.
In patients with early femoral head necrosis, the joint lesions are still mild, and it is expected that the pain will be relieved by drug treatment.
The most mainstream and commonly used drugs are anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs, such as celebrex and Le Song. It can inhibit the inflammatory reaction of femoral head and hip joint, relieve pain, and thus delay the operation time. Studies have shown that diphosphate can help delay the destruction of femoral head and thus relieve pain, but it is still controversial in academic circles.
In addition, Deputy Chief Physician Wang Jian reminded that at present, no drug is recognized as a drug to delay or even reverse the process of femoral head necrosis, which is the hardest hit area for counterfeit drugs and irregular diagnosis and treatment. Patients and friends need to keep this in mind and beware of being fooled.
Because many patients think that the side effects of traditional Chinese medicine are small, they have been looking for ways to treat femoral head necrosis with traditional Chinese medicine. So is TCM effective in treating femoral head necrosis? Deputy Chief Physician Wang Jian emphasized that all treatment methods, whether traditional Chinese medicine, western medicine, Miao medicine or Tibetan medicine, must be tested by randomized controlled clinical trials to prove their efficacy. At present, there is no randomized controlled trial to prove the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine in treating many diseases including femoral head necrosis.
Although Chinese medicine has a completely different theoretical paradigm from modern medicine (western medicine), it is difficult to analyze its therapeutic effect on femoral head necrosis with the discourse system of Chinese medicine. However, the principle of randomized controlled clinical trials comes from scientific laws and goes beyond disciplines. It can be said that all disciplines that study the material world, whether medical treatment, agriculture or machinery manufacturing, need to follow this set of scientific norms. Therefore, from a scientific point of view, we can only regret that there is no particularly effective method to treat femoral head necrosis in traditional Chinese medicine.
It is worth noting that Chinese medicine is often used by criminals as a cover to seek benefits because its theory is difficult to be repeatedly verified and its mass base is deep, especially when hormone drugs are mixed with Chinese medicine, which will cause endless harm.