In a standoff between an internet-based exercise program and a routine self-management progam for patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA), whose pain outcomes would prevail? A new study addresses just that. The research, “Effectiveness of Internet-Based Exercises Aimed at Treating Knee Osteoarthritis: The iBEAT-OA [Internet-Based Exercise Programme Aimed at Treating Knee Osteoarthritis] Randomized Clinical Trial,” appears in the February 23, 2021 edition of JAMA Open Network.
The randomized clinical trial, conducted by the University of Nottingham School of Medicine, Nottingham, UK, and Department of Health Sciences at Lund University in Sweden, included individuals aged 45 years or older with knee OA. Joint Academy, a digital osteoarthritis treatment-focused company in Sweden, provided the software for the study at no cost.
Leif Dahlberg, Ph.D., chief medical officer at Joint Academy and senior professor in Orthopedics at Lund University, told OTW, “The steadily increasing prevalence and high costs of treating chronic joint pain worldwide has been a problem for patients, healthcare systems, and healthcare payers for a long time. Patients struggle with their pain, and historically they’ve also struggled to stay on top of the first-line treatment whenever it’s been assigned to them.”
“Treating chronic joint pain requires daily exercises and managing that on your own can be quite overwhelming. So we began looking into alternatives to traditional care and realized that digital treatment had the potential to save insurance companies and their patients costly expenses and also provide quicker pain relief.”
The 48 participants in the intervention group had a structured exercise and OA information program delivered via a smartphone application provided by Joint Academy. The 57 individuals in the control group got traditional care, which included exercise and information from the NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines and Versus Arthritis, a UK-based nonprofit.
The Results
“The dramatic difference between those who reduced their pain using digital treatment (41%) compared to traditional care (6%) was substantial,” Dr. Dahlberg said to OTW. “Patients in the digital treatment also increased their physical function by 48%, while patients receiving traditional treatment only increased their physical function by 13%. This is particularly important in the U.S. as knee and hip replacement procedures are among the fastest growing medical treatments, but data shows that many of the replacements are inappropriate. The study shows how a digital solution could pave the way, and it arrives at a time when the country is staying at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic which means these results could be even more drastic now.”
Co-author Sameer Akram Gohir, M.Sc., Ph.D., physical therapist and researcher at the University of Nottingham, told OTW, “The results of the study really show how much can be gained by treating chronic knee pain digitally, and this will help reduce the burden on the healthcare system, especially when we are going through the COVID-19 pandemic where services are already stretched. We hope this study allows health policy-makers to consider the potential in digital alternatives when it comes to treating knee arthritis.”
When asked what further research might be needed,Dr. Dahlberg told OTW, “Joint Academy is a science-first company, so science is at the core of everything we do. Our treatment is already backed by 11 peer-reviewed scientific studies that examine the advantages of treating chronic joint pain digitally, and we will continue to push ahead with this line of research. The next piece of research we have coming up is a study that examines how patients’ appetite for invasive surgery changes after having gone through Joint Academy’s treatment. The study is currently being peer reviewed and we’re excited for the results.”
