Abstract
Introduction
Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) causes impairment through pain, stiffness and malalignment and knee joint replacement (KJR) may be necessary to alleviate such symptoms. There is disagreement whether patients with KJR increases their level of physical activity after surgery. The aim of this study is to investigate whether patients with KJR have a higher level of physical activity than patients with KOA, as measured by accelerometer-based method. Furthermore, to investigate whether patients achieve the same level of activity as healthy subjects five years post TJR.
Material and method
54 patients with KOA (29 women, mean age 62±8.6, mean BMI 27±5), 53 patients who had KJR five years earlier (26 women, mean age 66±7.2, mean BMI 30±5) and 171 healthy subjects (76 women, mean age 64±9.7, mean BMI 26±5) were included in this cross sectional study. The level of physical activity was measured over a mean of 5.5 days with a tri-axial accelerometer mounted on the thigh. Number of daily short walking bouts of
Results
Patients with KJR had 10.1 fewer short walking bouts (p=0.04), 745 fewer steps (p=0.19) and 6.2 fewer transfers (p=0.09) per day than patients with KOA. In addition, patients with KJR performed 21.7 fewer short walking bouts (p=0.001), 281 fewer steps (p=0.60) and 3.2 fewer transfers (p=0.32) per day than healthy subjects.
Conclusion
Patients with KJR do not seem to be more physically active than patients with KOA. Neither do the seem to be as active as healthy subjects, However, the results may suffer from selection bias and thus the results ought to be confirmed in a bigger cohort study.
