Group education and exercise is feasible in knee and hip osteoarthritis

INTRODUCTION: Clinical practice does not reflect current clinical guidelines recommending an early multimodal nonsurgical 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. FUNDING: This trial was funded by The Association of Danish Physiotherapists' Research Fund.