Immediate Effects of Self-Manual Therapy and Supervised Manual Therapy in Individuals with Knee Osteoarthritis

Background and Objective: Knee osteoarthritis is the degenerative disease that leads to pain, impaired mobility, poor function and frequent absence from work. The self-manual therapy affects to decrease pain and improve knee motions. However, the evidence of the different of the self-manual therapy and supervised manual therapy is lacking. This study aimed to compare the immediate effects of self-manual therapy with and without supervised manual therapy in individuals with knee osteoarthritis.

Materials and Method: Twenty four participants with knee osteoarthritis were randomly assigned into three groups; self-manual therapy group (n=8; 2 men and 6 women [age 74.00 ± 10.82 years]) PT manual therapy group (n=8; 2 men and 6 women [age 72.25 ± 10.75 years]) and control group (n=8; 8 women [age 73.25 ± 8.84 years]). The participants were received self-manual therapy or physical therapist’s manual therapy. Repeated measures ANOVA were used to determine effects for pressure pain threshold, knee range of motion and time up and go within group and between groups.

Results: These results showed that the self-manual therapy group significantly decreased pain after treatment. The PT manual therapy group showed significantly decrease pain and improves knee flexion and extension. No significant differences. There was no significant different in time up and go.

Conclusion: The self-manual therapy is an alternative treatment for pain reduction in individuals with knee OA. However, the PT manual therapy had superior benefits in improving knee range of motions.