Self-administered acupressure, knee health education may relieve OA knee pain
Key takeaways:
- For patients with knee osteoarthritis, self-administered acupressure may yield a greater reduction in pain vs. health education.
- Self-administered acupressure is a cost-effective treatment option.
The addition of self-administered acupressure to knee health education sessions may relieve pain in patients with knee osteoarthritis, according to published results.
Researchers performed a randomized clinical trial to evaluate rehabilitation outcomes in 314 patients (mean age, 62.7 years) who presented with probable knee OA from September 2019 to May 2022.
They randomly assigned 157 patients to perform self-administered acupressure and 157 patients in a control group to receive knee health education sessions only. Patients in the acupressure group received two acupressure training sessions and a brief knee health education session before self-intervention. Average duration of each self-administered acupressure session was 16.5 minutes.
Outcome measures included numerical rating scale (NRS) pain scores, WOMAC index, Short-Form 6-dimension scores (SF-6D) and gait speed tests.
Overall, 144 patients (91.7%) in the acupressure cohort and 146 patients (93%) in the health education only cohort completed all training sessions, and 116 patients (79.5%) in the acupressure cohort performed acupressure at least twice daily for 4 days per week during the 12-week period.
Researchers found patients who performed self-administered acupressure had a significantly greater reduction in mean NRS pain score (mean difference [MD] = 0.54) and a higher enhancement in SF-6D score (MD = 0.03) vs. patients who received health education only. Researchers noted self-administered acupressure was associated with a 90% probability of cost-effectiveness at a willingness-to-pay threshold of one gross domestic product per capita.
Researchers concluded that while self-administered acupressure did not result in significantly higher quality-adjusted life-years vs. health education only, the cost-effectiveness of self-administered acupressure supports its utilization.
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