The purpose of this review was to identify the effects of non-pharmacological conservative treatment on pain, range of motion and physical function in patients with mild to moderate hip osteoarthritis.
A systematic review based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines.
We searched MEDLINE, PEDro, Scopus and the Cochrane Library databases for randomized controlled trials related to non-pharmacological conservative treatments for hip osteoarthritis with the following keywords: "hip osteoarthritis," "therapeutics," "physical therapy modalities," and "combined physical therapy". The PEDro scale was used for methodological quality assessment and the Oxford Centre of Evidence-Based Medicine scale was used to assess the level of evidence. Outcomes measures related to pain, hip range of motion and physical function were extracted from these studies.
Twelve studies met the inclusion criteria. Most of the studies showed high level of evidence and only two showed low level of evidence. High quality of evidence showed that manual therapy and exercise therapy are effective in improving pain, hip range of motion and physical function. However, high quality studies based on combined therapies showed controversy in their effects on pain, hip range of motion and physical function.
Exercise therapy and manual therapy and its combination with patient education provides benefits in pain and improvement in physical function. The effects of combined therapies remain unclear. Further investigation is necessary to improve the knowledge about the effects of non-pharmacological conservative treatments on pain, hip range of motion and physical function.