Therapeutic Effects Of EMG-biofeedback On Patients With Knee Osteoarthritis

Objective: Osteoarthritis knee is a common disease of senior people，and it is themain reason for movement disorder of the elderly.It affects the life quality of the elderly,and increases their social and economic burden.There are many kinds of clinicaltreatments for knee osteoarthritis with a variety of curative effects. Electromyographicbiofeedback, which has achieved notable positive results, is widely applied in differentmedical areas,such as Stroke, Cerebral palsy, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and Headacheetc. Few studies have focused on Electromyographic biofeedback applications in themusculoskeletal system, especially the impact of Electromyographic biofeedbacktreatment on knee osteoarthritis. In this study, we investigated the clinical efficacy ofElectromyographic biofeedback treatment of knee osteoarthritis, in order to evaluate theElectromyographic biofeedback in the rehabilitation of knee osteoarthritis, and toprovide basis theoretical guidelines for the treatment of knee Osteoarthritis.Methods: This study followed44patients with knee osteoarthritis in the SecondAffiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University during the period from March2011toFebruary2012. The patients with age between40and70years old,17male and27female, suffered osteoarthritis for a course varying from a month to5years. Thepatients were randomly divided into the treatment (n=22) and the control (n=22) groups.Statistical analysis showed that the patients of the two groups were no significantlydifferent (P>0.05) in terms of ages, course of illness, Visual Analogous Scale (VAS)and Lysholm Knee Score Scale (LKSS) before treatment. Both groups receivedconventional rehabilitation therapies, including ultrashort wave diathermy, magnetictherapy, exercise therapy. In addition to the traditional rehabilitation therapies, thepatients in the treatment group were treated by electromyographic biofeedback. Allpatients were assessed with VAS and LKSS before and after treatments. Statistical analyses were applied to test the significant level of all the data.Results：The results of visual analogue scales showed that the treatment andcontrol group were2.15±0.61and3.01±0.68, respectively. the scores of both groupwere significantly lower (P<0.05) than their pretreatment scores. And the scores of thevisual analogue scales of treatment group were significantly lower than that of controlgroup(P<0.05). The results of Lysholm Knee Score Scale showed that treatment andcontrol groups were80.59±8.51and70.05±8.16, respectively. The scores of both groupwere significantly higher (P<0.05) than their pretreatment scorces. The scores of theLysholm Knee Score Scale of the treatment group were significantly higher than thecontrol group (P<0.05). For therapeutic effect evaluation,the excellent rate of treatmentgroup was86.3%. In contrast, the excellent rate of treatment group was only59.0%.Theclinical efficacy of the treatment group was significantly better than that of controlgroup (P<0.05).Conclusions: Electromyographic biofeedback together with conventionalrehabilitation treatments reduced the pains of the osteoarthritis patients, enhanced theirknee function rehabilitation, and improved their life quality.