Knee arthritis: catheter procedure eases pain for a year in Charité study

People with knee osteoarthritis who get no relief from physical therapy, drugs or injections may have another option, a study from Berlin suggests. A team led by Dr. Florian Nima Fleckenstein of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin examined genicular artery embolization. Using a thin catheter guided by real-time X-ray, doctors deliver gelatin-based particles into small arteries around the knee; the particles dissolve within hours. No incision is needed. The study was published in the journal Radiology and reported by ScienceDaily on Oct. 14.

It included 194 patients with a median age of 69 whose symptoms had persisted after at least three months of conventional care. All 239 procedures were technically successful. There were no moderate or severe adverse events; 6.7% of procedures had mild, temporary complications such as skin discoloration. Median pain on a 0-to-10 scale fell from 7 to 3 and remained there at 12 months. According to the authors, 80% of patients who completed the one-year pain assessment showed clinically meaningful improvement.

"This lets us speak about safety and efficacy with real confidence," Fleckenstein said. But the single-center study had no untreated or sham comparison group, so it cannot show how much of the improvement came from the procedure itself. A 2026 randomized trial of 58 patients found no significant difference from a sham procedure. The U.S. Society of Interventional Radiology supports the procedure only for carefully selected patients and has called for more trials.