Digital intervention package improved pain intensity, quality of life, activity after TKA
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Key takeaways:
- A digital intervention consisting of an exercise app, fitness tracker and health coach improved outcomes after TKA.
- Patients in the intervention group had improvements in pain intensity, disability and activity.
Published results showed a digital intervention package, which included an activity tracker, exercise app and health coach, yielded improvements in pain intensity, pain disability, quality of life and activity after total knee arthroplasty.
Researchers performed a randomized clinical trial of 102 patients (mean age of 67.9 years) who underwent TKA between June 2020 and July 2021 with follow-up intervals of 3 months, 6 months and 1 year. Researchers randomly assigned 51 patients to receive usual postoperative care plus a digital intervention package, which consisted of an exercise app, fitness tracker and online health coach. The remaining 51 patients received usual care plus a fitness tracker with all notifications turned off.
According to the study, 47 patients (92%) in each group had complete follow-up at 3 months. Researchers found patients in the intervention group had lower pain scores compared with the usual care group, but they noted the mean difference between the groups did not meet the minimal clinically important threshold. However, researchers found patients in the intervention group had clinically important improvements in pain intensity (mean difference = 0.94), pain disability (mean difference = 5.42) and sedentary behavior (mean difference = 9.76) compared with the usual care group at all follow-up intervals.
“Although the reductions in pain were too small to be of clinical importance, these findings indicating that digital interventions improve additional outcomes, such as pain disability, quality of life and sedentary behavior, suggest that future studies considering digital interventions should account for participants’ abilities and preferences,” the researchers wrote in the study.
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