Physical activity level in patients with knee osteoarthritis visiting Dhulikhel hospital: A cross sectional study.

Abstract

Background:Physical activity is an important public health intervention to improve the health of persons with arthritis. Because of pain on mobility, Patient with knee osteoarthritis may be physically inactive as compared to population without osteoarthritis.

Objective: The objective of this study was to identify the level of physical activity in patients with knee osteoarthritis.

Methods: Patient with knee osteoarthritis meeting the clinical diagnostic criteria given by American college of Rheumatology were interviewed global physical activity questionnaire. Then physical activity of patient with knee osteoarthritis were classified into light, moderate and vigorous physical activity. Nepali-version of numeric pain rating scale was also used in order to measure the pain intensity which was further classified into mild, moderate and severe pain. Data were further analyzed to find out the correlation between two measures.

Result: Out of 78, Patients with knee osteoarthritis, 19(24.4 %) were male and 59(76.6%) were female.79.5% of patient with knee osteoarthritis are involved in moderate level of physical activity. Among the knee osteoarthritis patient 16.7% had mild pain, 76.9% had moderate pain and 6.4% had severe pain.

Conclusion: Most of the knee osteoarthritis patients were involved in moderate level of     physical activity. Work-related domain of physical activity contributed more to total physical activity as compared to leisure-time physical activity. And we found that there is no association between level of pain and physical activity in knee osteoarthritis patient.

Keywords: Function, Knee, Pain, Osteoarthritis, Physical activity