Impact of body weight on knee joint injuries, demographic, clinical and radiological data for the period September 2019 - March 2020

Research Background: Overweight and obesity are defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat that poses a health risk. Obesity is the biggest risk factor that can be prevented OA. Subjects with BMI> 30 kg / m2 were 6.8 times more likely to develop knee OA than normal weight controls. Currently, about 10 percent of the population is affected and the prevalence increases with age. Osteoarthritis (OA) ranks globally among the 50 most common pathologies of functional musculoskeletal diseases and injuries, affecting over 250 million people or 4% of the world's population. Of the global disease burden for OA, knee OA accounts for 83%.

Purpose: The aim is to find the cause of the increase in body weight and articular pathologies of the knee joint in patients in Albania.

Results: In the target group taken in the study, with articular knee pathology it is noticed that the majority are women, with approximately 87% and men only 13%. The majority of patients are in the age group of 51 to 70 years, representing 64.5% of the target group. Overweight people in this study occupy 35.5% of patients, while those obese about 20% of the total. It turned out that persons at normal weight were 35.5% and those underweight 9.7%. Most of the patients do not have a concomitant pathology, referred to by 42% of the total, while in the second and third place with a significant percentage are respectively endocrine pathology with about 26% and cardiovascular pathology with 23%. As a clinical sign most patients had pronounced hypertrophic synovia, representing the graph 35.5% of the total. The pain was referred to as the most distressing sign by 29% of patients, crepitations present in 19% and morning stiffness in 16%. From the obtained data, the highest percentage is occupied by the category that represents the third grade with approximately 39% of the total value, in the second place is ranked the second grade with approximately 29%, and in the third and fourth place respectively the grade of the first and fourth degree.

Conclusions: Knee joint pathologies correlate with body weight and occur in overweight or obese patients, and the first distinguishing clinical sign is moving knee pain. Knee osteoarthritis is associated with other autoimmune pathologies influenced by immune factors, and their main treatment is glucocorticoids and methotrexate. The grade of the graph at the time of diagnosis is mainly the second and third grades. It is very important in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis patient education for weight reduction.