Montana Neurological Associates

There are some wonderful new ways to treat osteoarthritis in young, active adults. We're talking adults as young as in their 30s up to early 60s. Up until recently, only older adults were considered for a knee joint replacement. The acceptable age for that has gone down.

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When you sprain an ankle over and over, it may be time to do something different. Some experts suggest taping the ankle. The idea is to increase the sensory messages to the joint and surrounding muscles. The hope is that this extra input will improve how quickly and accurately the ankle detects even the slightest change in position.

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Wrist pain can be very disabling for the athlete. This is especially true for gymnasts; tennis, soccer, or volleyball players; and even competitive divers. Pain can occur along either side of the wrist, but when it affects the ulnar wrist (side away from the other hand), surgeons must rule out triangular fibrocartilage (TFC) tears.

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Guidelines regarding the use of prophylactic antibiotics (antibiotics given to avoid an infection rather than to treat one) in spinal surgery help spinal surgeons in using the antibiotics for the best outcomes possible. The authors of this article discuss how the guidelines came to be and graded the recommendations to show how effective the guidelines are.

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Carpal tunnel syndrome is becoming increasingly common among people in the western world. It's caused by an irritation of the nerve, the median nerve, that runs from your forearm into the hand. It's most often a repetitive stress injury, an overuse injury of the hand, although it may have other causes. Once it's been diagnosed, treatment can consist of splinting, pain medications, injections of steroids, or even surgery.

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As physical activity drops among North American children, doctors are seeing a rise in disorders, such as type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke later on in life. Back pain is also something doctors are seeing more of, as early as childhood. Because doctors and researchers are constantly trying to find ways to prevent illness. the authors of this article wanted to see if there was a relationship between physical activity in children and back pain in their teen years.

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Infection after knee replacement surgery is a well-known risk and one everyone would like to avoid. In this study, surgeons from the Rochester, Minnesota Mayo Clinic get to the bottom of what causes infections serious enough to need surgery to treat them.

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Managing blood sugar levels isn't the only problem facing patients with diabetes. Over time, complications such as collapse of the arch in the foot can occur. This condition is called Charcot midfoot arthropathy. Charcot is the name of the physician who first discussed this problem.

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As more and more adults in the United States get total hip replacements, the number of revision (second) surgeries has also gone up. Experts say the reasons for this may be three-fold: patients are younger, many patients of all ages are more active, and implants aren't designed to last long enough.

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You would think that the increased safety measures in motor vehicles these days would mean fewer injuries after accidents. But, in fact, the number of spine fractures has actually gone up. With the use of both a seat belt and an air bag, it seems like the opposite should be true. Why is that?

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