Knee OA: does PT help?
A recent interesting article suggested that physical therapy for knee osteoarthritis (OA) was no better than placebo (see knee arthritis PT not better than placebo AnnRheumDis2022 in dropbox, or 10.1136/annrheumdis2021-221129) Details: -- 206 Danish adults at least 50 years old in an open label, RCT who had symptomatic and radiologically-confirmed knee osteoarthritis in Denmark were randomized to an eight week exercise and education program versus four intra-articular saline injections, from July 2019 to September 2020 -- average knee pain was at least 4 on a 10-point scale, radiologically verified to be tibiofemoral OA (Kellgren-Lawrence grade at least 2) -- those with prior intra-articular treatments within three months were excluded -- participants receiving saline injections were so informed, and all patients were told that the “active ingredients” of both interventions were unverified -- those in the education/exercise program had two 1.5-hou...