Postoperative exercise is effective for improving activities of daily living (ADL) in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty (TKA), and exercise has been included in standard care after surgery provided in Japan. However, it is unknown whether standard care has room to develop for improving ADL. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of an intensive functional rehabilitation (IFR) program in addition to standard care on the recovery of ADL following surgery.
A total of 104 inpatients with knee osteoarthritis undergoing TKA were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control group. The experimental group (n = 57) were given standard care and participated in the IFR program immediately after surgery (e.g., stand up and sit down, strengthen the knee extensor muscle, climbing onto a platform, and walking laterally). The control group (n = 47) were given standard care only. Primary outcomes were the score of Functional Independence Measure (FIM) and the Barthel Index (BI) at 2 weeks postoperatively. Matching using the propensity score was performed to control the influence of the patient characteristic on the outcome.
As a result of matching, 42 patients were extracted. The averages (standard deviation) of the FIM motor score were 79.0 (10.8) for the experimental group and 80.5 (9.4) for the control group. The BI scores were 88.1 (13.3) for the experimental group and 91.0 (10.1) for the control group. The experimental and control groups did not show significant intergroup differences in either score.
Our study shows that as compared to standard care, IFR program for 2 weeks in addition to standard care after surgery did not significantly improve ADL in patients undergoing TKA.