Online treatment may reduce chronic knee pain: study

An online intervention programme, combined with exercise and pain-coping skills training, may reduce chronic knee pain in osteoarthritis patients, a new study has found.
Knee osteoarthritis, the leading cause of chronic knee pain, causes loss of function, reduced quality of life and psychological disability.
There is no cure for osteoarthritis and given the ageing population and increasing obesity, disease burden is rapidly increasing.
An internet-delivered treatment programme to determine if it could improve pain and function in patients with chronic knee pain was tested for the study.
Researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia studied 148 adults aged 50 years or older who had chronic knee pain symptoms.

Participants were randomly assigned to have 8 sessions with a physical therapist to learn home exercises and pain-coping skills over the internet - treatment group or to get access to educational materials over the Internet - control group.

Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group. The intervention group had seven Skype sessions with a physical therapist to learn home exercises and pain-coping skills over three months. The control group received educational materials online.
It was found that participants in the treatment group reported more improvement in their pain and physical functioning than those in the control group at three and nine months.

The study was published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.