Effectiveness of exercise with a mobile application on pain of knee osteoarthritis: a randomized clinical trial

Knee osteoarthritis is the most common cause of pain in the older population and affecting about one third of the elderly throughout the world. There is some evidence that exercise could lead to pain improvement in elderly patients with knee osteoarthritis. Interventions that target physical activity in elderly patients are damaged by high dropouts. Low levels of compliance with exercise have become a major challenge for these patients. Using an educational app can be a solution to this challenge. the first step was to develop a sports application and an array of effective sports movements in the treatment of osteoarthritis was introduced to educate the patient. Then 135 patients with osteoarthritis with average age 60.6 ± 6.18 were randomly divided into two groups . Finally, 85 patients stayed in the intervention, of which 20 (23%) were male. 57% of the participants had Grade 2 knee osteoarthritis, 34% Grade 3, and others with Grade 4. Patients were studied for 12 weeks. Exercise program was performed repetitively three times a day and pain variables (based on the WOMAC questionnaire) and (Lequesne questionnaire) at 0, 4, 12 weeks intervals. The average Pain score of patients after exercise was significantly decreased in both groups (P<0/05). Comparing the average Pain score of patients between the two application groups and the pamphlet, there was no significant difference in pain reduction, which indicates the effect of exercise on reducing pain regardless of the type of training and intervention. The lower dropout percentage of patients that use the application (25%) than pamphlets (42%), indicates that the application can be used in future as an effective tool for patients education