Both in-person, virtual interventions yielded clinical improvement of hip, knee OA
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A 3-month face-to-face intervention yielded similar clinical improvements compared with a 3-month virtual intervention for pain reduction in patients with hip or knee osteoarthritis, according to published results.
Therese Jönsson, PhD, and colleagues used registry data to analyze outcomes of 6,946 patients (mean age of 67 years) who underwent either in-person treatment (n = 4,237) or virtual treatment administered with a digital application (n = 2,709) of hip or knee OA from April 1, 2018, to Dec. 31, 2019. Both interventions consisted of 3 months of education and exercise, with a program adherence of 80% or higher, according to the study.
Outcome measures included the numeric rating scale for joint pain, walking difficulties, health-related quality of life, willingness to undergo joint surgery and fear-avoidance behavior.
At 3 months, researchers found similar clinically important pain reduction in both cohorts. In-person treatment yielded a –1.1 mean change in joint pain, while the virtual intervention yielded a –1.87 mean change in joint pain. However, researchers noted the virtual cohort experienced a larger estimated improvement at 3 months. Secondary outcomes were similar between the cohorts.
Despite clinically relevant improvements in pain, irrespective of treatment modality, Jönsson and colleagues determined the increased benefit of the virtual intervention was of uncertain clinical importance.
“Digital delivery of first-line intervention has the potential to reach more individuals with OA and improve the suboptimal implementation of exercise and education in the management of OA,” researchers wrote in the study.
“We suggest that first-line OA interventions should be offered both digitally and face-to-face and that persons with knee and hip OA should be able to choose the mode of treatment delivery they prefer to reach as many persons with OA as possible,” they added.
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