Effect of Neuromuscular Exercises on Osteoarthritic Knee Functional Mobility after Hyaluronic Acid Injection

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

The Department of Musculoskeletal Disorders & their Surgery, Faculty of Physical Therapy, Pharos* and Cairo** Universities and the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University***, Egypt

Abstract

Abstract
Background: Knee Osteoarthritis (OA) is most common disabling disease with middle and old ages widely distributed need future researches to detect the effect of therapy. Recently Hyaluronic Acid (HA) and therapeutic exercises like neu-romuscular exercises used as treatment option with recent good evidence.
Purpose: To detect the effect of neuromuscular exercises on knee OA after Intra-Articular Hyaluronic Acid (IA-HA) injections in the functional mobility.
Patients and Methods: This study was conducted on thirty patients both gender with mild to moderate knee OA. Their age ranged from 40-60 years old. All patients were referred by orthopedic surgeons who are responsible for diagnosis and injecting HA based on clinical and radiological examination. All patients were randomly assigned into 2 groups: Group (A) this group included 15 patients received IA-HA injections, Group (B) This group included 15 patients received IA-HA injections and neuromuscular exercises, three sessions per week for one month. The study was conducted at private physical therapy orthopedics rehabilitation center from October 2016 to July 2017.
Evaluation: Timed Up and Go (TUG) test was used to assess the functional performance. Results showed that both groups were effective in improving of the functional mobility, but HA alone (Group A) were less effective than HA added to neuromuscular exercises.
Conclusion: It can be concluded that both HA injection and HA added to neuromuscular exercises are effective treat-ment for knee OA functional mobility, and adding neuromus-cular exercises gained better results than isolated.

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