Background: Patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) demonstrate an increased falls' risk, but it is not known how knee OA affects stumble response and subsequent recovery. In previous trials, an orthopaedic manual physical therapist (OMPT) approach resulted in meaningful improvements for reducing the pain, stiffness, and functional limitations associated with knee OA. Purpose: Describe stumble recovery in patients with knee OA and observe the changes following OMPT intervention. Methods: This was a prospective case series with age-and gender-matched controls. Five patients with symptomatic knee OA (57.2 [1.5 years]) and five matched controls (56.8 [3.2 years]) completed the alternate step test and walked on a treadmill with lateral to medial translational walking surface perturbations. Data were collected on strides to recovery and reaction times in response to perturbation. After completing the WOMAC, patients were treated using an OMPT approach for 4 weeks and re-tested. Results: The patient group demonstrated meaningful clinical improvements in WOMAC scores (mean change 62%, 86.8 [40.6] to 32.6 [31.9]) and alternate step test performance (mean change 28%, 9.3 [2.0] to 6.8 [1.6] seconds) at 4 weeks. At baseline, two of the five patients differed appreciably from their matched controls in both strides to recovery and reaction time. After four weeks of treatment, both patients demonstrated significant improvements following intervention that aligned them more closely with their controls.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.