Treatment

• Preventive
• Curative
• Symptomatic

• Non-surgical
• Surgical

In general terms, any treatment could be either preventive - we intervene before the disease even starts (vaccination is the prime example).

Curative treatment has a goal of eradicating the disease and restoring the body part back to normal (for example an antibiotic for a strep throat).

Symptomatic treatment is aimed at alleviating the symptoms that a particular condition causes (putting glasses on makes you see better, but wearing glasses does not heal the underlying eye problem).

The osteoarthritis treatment options can generally be divided into non-surgical and surgical.