Group education and exercise is feasible in knee and hip osteoarthritis

INTRODUCTION: Clinical practice does not reflect current clinical guidelines recommending an early multimodal non-surgical treatment for knee and hip osteoarthritis (OA). The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility of such an initiative (Good Life with osteoArthritis in Denmark (GLA:D) in persons with mild to moderate knee and/or hip OA-related pain.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: This was a pilot study with a 36-patient cohort and three-month follow-up. The treatment consisted of two 1.5-hour sessions of patient education and six weeks of individualized supervised neuromuscular exercise according to the previously published NEuroMuscular Exercise programme. The primary outcome was pain on a visual analogue scale (0-100). Secondary outcomes were Euro-Quality-of-Life - 5 Dimensional form (EQ-5D), Arthritis Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES), 30-second chair stand test, timed 20-meter walk and body mass index. Furthermore, compliance was registered.

RESULTS: Thirty-four (94%) participants completed the follow-up. There were significant improvements (p < 0.05) in the primary outcome pain (-16 mm), in time in the 20-meter walk test (-0.7 s), in EQ-5D (0.053), in ASES (7.3) and in the number of complete chair stands (1.4). Compliance was high in relation to both patient education and exercise.

CONCLUSION: The pilot study demonstrated that the intervention is feasible and that it is possible to implement GLA:D in clinical care. Introducing GLA:D nationwide could improve the adherence to clinical guidelines and the quality of the treatment of knee and hip OA.