Gout is a painful condition that causes crystals to grow around the joints due to a build up of uric acid. The crystals cause the joints to inflame, resulting in serious pain for the patient. What is not well known is that gout can also trigger abnormal bone spurs around the joints, which triggers nerve damage. Operations that chisel off this part of the bone, however, can relieve a lot of the pain for gout sufferers.
In the U.K.’s Daily Mail, retired international lawyer Chris Knight, 67, discussed his personal journey with gout and the relief he finally found. After being diagnosed with the condition at age 56, Knight began taking colchicines, a commonly prescribed anti-inflammatory drug. While the drug provided temporary relief, he soon began to be plagued by pains in his knees and left leg.
Doctors were unsure of how to treat the condition and told Knight painkillers may be his only option. He scoured the Internet for a second opinion and found that orthopedic surgery offered sufferers of gout a chance to relieve their pain from bone spurs.
The bone spurs are caused by the inflammation of soft tissue around the bone, the Daily Mail explained. The inflammation can cause the lining of the bone to start growing, stretching nerves and causing additional pain. The spurs can be up to 5 centimeters long, and if a nerve is stretched across the spur it can cause pain and numbness. A routine operation can fix this.
In Knight’s case, his surgeon chiseled off the bone spur without damaging the nerve and put him on allopurinol to reduce the levels of uric acid in his blood.
“The following week I was as active as ever—without pain,” Knight wrote for the paper. “Since I have to go on taking allopurinol for life to keep the condition under control, and am keeping up with the lifestyle changes, I hope I’ll have no more of that agonizing pain.”
