 I am Dr. Srinu Bhaskar. I am with the Manipal Group of Hospitals Karadi Pune. On the occasion of World Arthritis Day, I would like to throw some light on this particular illness, which affects a significant amount of our population, especially the senior citizen population. So arthritis, as we all know, is a ailment that affects our joints when the cartilage or the cushioning material that we call in between the bones undergoes somewhere and there is friction in between the bones, which leads to the pain and deformity of arthritis. The disease burden, if you look at purely in terms of numbers in our country, there has been a significant rise in the late 1990s. It was about 20 million of our population that was affected. And I think in the last five years or so, that is around 60 million. So there has been about a 40 million spurt in the number of cases of osteoarthritis all over the country. And now this is a problem that not just affects patients in terms of pain, but it's a problem that severely disables their day-to-day activities because of the pain. They're not able to go about their routine activities. So it also leads to a significant amount of depression among these patients. So it's not just the mechanical solution that needs to be looked at, but also at times certain ailments like hypertension, cardiovascular problems, diabetes needs the patients to be active and fit. And because of the pains in their bones, joints, hips, knees, the activity levels significantly come down. And as a result, these other medical conditions worsen. Over the last two, three decades, we've had enormous developments both in terms of techniques and technologies that we can offer to our patients in terms of treatment for these ailments. The common treatment that was usually offered was, you know, surgeries like knee replacement when you have complete bone-on-bone arthritis, when you have severe wear in there, you have a lot of deformities. That was the only go-to treatment that was offered to patients. It has worked phenomenally well over the last few decades and a lot of patients have benefited from this treatment. But what we have seen significantly in the last decade and a half is that there are newer modalities, techniques coming and technologies coming in like partial knee replacements or what we call as microplastic surgeries where we can, by using, you know, robotic assist or computerized, you know, just take care of the very small damaged area of the knee and the rest of that is almost 70% of the knee is untouched. So the patient has a much more natural feel about the knee. So we are not just looking at survival of the knee implant that we put in patients. We are also looking at the functionality, so how well they can get back to their day-to-day routine kind of activities. Also, there has been enormous amounts of improvements in pain management techniques and post-op and perioperative care of patients. So the risk factors of these procedures have come down significantly. Post-operatively patients hardly experience the significant kind of pain that they used to do about 10, 15 years back. So all in all, this is a procedure that has been quite helpful in terms of improving quality of life for patients. And other very, very important aspect of arthritis that the patient should be aware of is that it is not just surgical treatment that one needs to consider all the time. If you meet your doctor early in time when you are at the onset of these symptoms, there are options like physiotherapy, medications. At times there is this gel injection called as visco supplement injection that can significantly bring down your pain and get you back to your normal lifestyle. And not just that, it can also at times slow down the progress of arthritis. So one needs to keep this diagnosis in the back of your mind when you have early hip and knee problems and not wait on it. Getting an early diagnosis and early consult is of vital importance so that we can initiate treatment modernities appropriately and try and maybe even avoid surgical intervention. Thank you.