Organ Preservation Minimally Invasive Treatment of Deforming Osteoarthritis of the Knee Joint in a Multimorbid Patient

INTRODUCTION: Deforming osteoarthritis of the knee joint is a widespread disease in the world with pain as the main symptom appearing at later stages of the lesion. The disease leads to deformation of the joint and disability of the patient, with pain syndrome acquiring a chronic character. Today, there are many conservative complexes for prevention and treatment of the disease, but their application does not reduce the number of newly recorded cases and does not lead to a stable remission of pain syndrome. If conservative treatment appears ineffective, especially at later stages of the disease, surgical treatment methods are used. The majority of surgeries are invasive, and patients with severe chronic diseases often have contraindications for large-scale interventions, and some of them are not psychologically prepared for them. At present, with the development of technologies of treatment for osteoarthritis, considerable attention is paid to minimally invasive and organ preserving techniques of surgical treatment; in this context the search for alternative methods is relevant. The article describes successful application of endovascular embolization of the popliteal artery branches in a 64-year-old female patient with stage 3 osteoarthritis of the knee joint and concomitant multimorbid pathology. CONCLUSION: Endovascular embolization of the popliteal artery branches is a promising method for multimorbid patients with osteoarthritis not only at early, but also at late stages of the disease, as a method permitting to delay endoprosthetics. However, before this technique has been more widely implemented in practice, it is necessary to solve such issues as: developing clear indications and contraindications for its use, demonstrating the evidentiary potential of the method, determining the genesis of the observed complications and taking measures to prevent them.