The author's complex of hydrokinesiotherapy as method of rehabilitation of patients with rheumatoid arthritis after total hip replacement (preliminary message)

Abstract

Introduction. Rehabilitation of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and polyarthritis after arthroplasty is a debatable and open issue. The main direction in their rehabilitation is physical therapy, and the safest and most convenient way is aqua gymnastics.The aim. To analyze the clinical and functional results in patients with rheumatoid arthritis after a course of hydrokinesiotherapy after total hip arthroplasty. Materials and methods. Twenty patients after total hip arthroplasty used the bipedal cyclic swimming method (Patent of Russia No. 2733686) to supplement the standard rehabilitation complex. The course consisted of 7–10 lessons and was carried out 1.5 months after the operation. The evaluation criteria were pain syndrome according to the visual analog scale, goniometry, DAS28 (Disease Activity Score in 28 joints), Harris scale and short-HAQ (short Health Assessment Questionnaire).Results. Eighteen patients remained in the study. They said that active water activities reduced the pain syndrome. In terms of angle measurements, we saw an improvement in flexion and extension in the joint. The study shows that arthroplasty with synovectomy helps to reduce the activity of the disease, and the use of aqua gymnastics in half of the cases supports this trend. All patients improved on the Harris and HAQ scores, but the best scores were in patients who were in remission or had low disease activity before surgery.Conclusions. The presented method of swimming can improve postoperative results. This study is a pilot one and requires further study using a control comparison group.