Bone Death From Medical Steroid Use

"One of the tragic medical conditions we’ve seen this past 6 years while being involved in orthopedic stem cell work is young healthy patients that develop osteonecrosis (ON also known as avascular necrosis) of the hip after taking oral steroids. As an example, we just reviewed stem cell procedure candidacy for a young man who was given high dose oral steroids for an upper respiratory infection and as a result developed osteonecrosis. Luckily this was one of the few patients who contacted us for an AVN stem cell treatment early, while he was firmly in stage 1-where the success rate of a stem cell reimplant to treat osteonecrosis is still very high. As a result of yesterday’s reminder of this very dire societal problem, I decided to focus the blog this morning on high dose oral steroids and ON. Osteonecrosis is a disease where the bone (usually in one area, sometimes in many) begins to die off and will often rapidly collapse."

http://www.regenexx.com/2011/03/oral-steroids-and-the-tragedy-of-osteonecrosisavascular-necrosis/

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3475561

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Osteonecrosis as a complication of steroid dependent asthma: a case report and review.
Kalliel JN, Weltman JK, Mandell CH, Rahman A.
Abstract
Corticosteroid associated osteonecrosis is a complex disease requiring high physician suspicion to make an early diagnosis. Although the exact cause is not completely known, it appears that systemic illness, anatomic location and elevated interosseous pressures interact to produce this lesion. Plain film and technetium bone scan are most commonly used for diagnosis, but occasionally, invasive procedures are required. Surgical treatment, ranging from decompression to total hip replacement, is most commonly, but not always recommended."

 

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... hi flutterby! how are you today? good topic!