Self-Directed Knee OA Exercise…

An article published in JAMA Internal Medicine poses the question, does the addition of behavior-change text messages improve the lives—and pain and functioning—of those with osteoarthritis in their knees. The simple answer appears to be "yes," at least for the 206 adults in the trial, all of whom had a clinical diagnosis of knee OA. Both a control group and an intervention group were given access to a website containing OA info along with exercise/activity info. The intervention group also received “a prescription for a 24-week self-directed strengthening regimen and guidance to increase physical activity, supported by automated behavior-change text messages encouraging exercise adherence.”

The study concluded that “a self-directed web-based strengthening exercise regimen and physical activity guidance supported by automated behavior-change text messages to encourage exercise adherence improved knee pain and function at 24 weeks. This unsupervised, free-to-access digital intervention is an effective option to improve patient access to recommended OA exercise and/or to support clinicians in providing exercise management for people with knee OA at scale across the population.”

 

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Other Categories:

• behavioral pain management

• exercise

• osteoarthritis

• technology/robotics

• Telehealth/telemedicine