Urtė Venclovaitė¹, Viktorija Sabaitytė²

¹Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Academy of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine

Department of Radiology, Kaunas, Lithuania

²Vilnius University, Academy of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Vilnius, Lithuania

Abstract

Osteoarthritis is a common cause of knee or hip joints function disorder. Dysfunction of movement, constant pain, and joint stiffness are the main reasons of individual inability to function properly in daily activities, sometimes could even lead to one’s disability. Nowadays, the impact of osteoarthritis in daily routine and health care centers is expected to be increasing because of the aging population and higher obesity rates. According to this, the understanding of pathogenesis and risk factors of the disease is important for diagnostics ant treatment. It was recently discovered that the mechanisms associated with impaired cartilage metabolism in the subchondral bone, inflammation, as well as pathological processes in the synovium play a significant role in the OA pathogenesis. These pathological changes can be discovered clinically or using imaging modalities. Aim: To select and analyze scientific publications which study knee and hip joint osteoarthritis epidemiology, etiology, pathogenesis and diagnostics. Methods: the review of literature was managed by using “PubMed” medical database, selecting publications which investigated knee and hip joints osteoarthritis. Conclusion: after review of the literature, epidemiology, etiology, pathogenesis, and diagnostics of the knee and hip joints osteoarthritis are presented .

Keywords: knee osteoarthritis, hip osteoarthritis, pathogenesis, epidemiology, etiology, diagnostics.