Pros And Cons Of Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is an extremely common joint disease that is most frequently seen in the knee and in the older population. Since OA oftentimes leads to disability, the patient’s proprioception is negatively altered. Decreased proprioception can cause unstable joints and make the effected joint more prone to traumatic injury. Unstable joints increase the likelihood of falling which in turn can also increase the already high chance of traumatic injury. In order to counter this change, physicians often prescribe medications or do injections along with strengthening exercises. The authors’ goal was to compare two rehabilitation protocols for patients with OA. One protocol consisted of solely strengthening exercises while the other incorporated kinesthesia/balance exercises along with the strength training. The study included 66 female patients who were split into the two different groups. However, at the end of one year only 45 patients’ data were able to be used due to different reasons of not following up. Exercises were
There was only a small increase with the strengthening group. After the one year follow up, both group’s scores slightly dropped; however, the kinesthesia group still had a much better mean score than the strengthening group. Both WOMAC pain and stiffness numbers significantly decreased for both groups from the baseline scores after the eight week period. Nevertheless, the kinesthesia group was the only group to see improvement at the one year follow up for pain and only a minute increase for stiffness. The strengthening group saw both score increase after one year. In addition, the kinesthesia group saw a larger drop in scores for the Lequesne index. Even though there was a slight increase after one year, the mean score was still lower than the strengthening group immediately after the rehabilitation