Comparison of the effect of 8 weeks of hydrotherapy and land-based exercise therapy on some physical and psychological indicators of the elderly with knee osteoarthritis

Knee osteoarthritis is one of the most common diseases of the elderly that leads to pain, dryness, and difficulty performing activities, impaired function and reduced quality of life. It is necessary to use a solution to control the complications of the disease and improve the quality of life of patients. This study aimed to compare the effect of hydrotherapy and land-based exercise therapy on physical and psychological indexes of patients with knee osteoarthritis

This study was applied and quasi-experimental. 54 women with knee osteoarthritis ranging from 60-69 years (height: 159.96±5.53, weight: 76.93±9.50) were purposefully selected and randomly divided into two groups of hydrotherapy and land-based exercise therapy (for 8 weeks’ knee injury and osteoarthritis outcome score questionnaire were used to pain, disease complications, difficulty in activities and quality of life. Analysis of variance for repeated measures in SPSS 26 software was used to analyze the data.

The results showed that both of methods lead to intragroup changes in of pain (P=0.001), disease complications (P=0.001), daily activities (P=0.001) and quality of life (P=0.001) indicators of patients. Only in the index of functional and sports activities, the effect of hydrotherapy was more than land-based exercise therapy (P=0.04).

Land-based exercise therapy as much as hydrotherapy reduces pain and complications, convenience in performing activities, and increases the quality of life of patients with knee osteoarthritis. Therefore, either of these two methods can be prescribed according to the patient's condition.