School of Health Sciences- The University of South Australia
Project:
Does targeting pain-related beliefs in people with knee osteoarthritis increase physical activity?
People with painful osteoarthritis often have low levels of physical activity and this can negatively affect their health. We performed a pilot, feasibility study of a new treatment that aimed to increase activity levels in people with painful knee osteoarthritis. A feasibility study is important when you are testing a treatment that has never before been used because it allows to you perform a “test-run”, so to speak, before you perform a large clinical trial.
In our study, we were performing a “test-run” on a new treatment that combined a pain biology education program (explaining what we know about pain and what pain means) and a walking program. We aimed to determine what people with knee osteoarthritis thought about this new intervention – what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what they thought we could improve. In addition, we also aimed to determine whether it would be feasible to perform a large clinical trial in this population with this treatment. Specifically, we evaluated how quickly we could recruit people, whether people completed all the treatments, and whether people completed all the outcome measures at the different time points. Last, we also aimed to determine what the best control treatment would be to use in a large clinical trial (i.e., to compare the new treatment with).
We completed our feasibility study with the final data collected in February 2019. Twenty participants with painful knee osteoarthritis received either the new intervention of pain education and a walking program (10 participants) or a control treatment (10 participants) which involved general education, a walking program, and ultrasound (set at a very low setting). Participants received four, one-on-one treatment sessions with the physiotherapist (~1.5hrs each) followed by four weeks of at home workbook activities. We measured outcomes such as pain, function, number of steps, and general activity level (the latter two using an activity monitor) at baseline, 4 weeks, 8 weeks and 6 months. Overall we found that both treatments were reported to be helpful and were credible to participants, and in both groups, pain decreased, function increased, and activity level increased. We determined that a control group that involves only basic education and a walking program (but not ultrasound) would be best for the larger trial.
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Does targeting pain-related beliefs in people with knee osteoarthritis increase physical activity?
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