Effects of Motor Imagery Intervention on Functional Recovery Following Total Knee Arthroplasty

Summary

The knee osteoarthritis becoming a leading cause of disability among older adults' population. When conventional treatments fail, a total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is suggested. Although TKA treatment significantly reduces pain and improve mobility of patients, there is still high prevalence of patients whose neuromuscular function is impaired up to three years following TKA, which can be directly prescribed to poor or/and inadequate rehabilitation practice. Thus, motor imagery (MI) is proposed as additional rehabilitation tool to convention physical therapy to reduce decline of neuromuscular function in early days post-surgery. Recent studies showed that MI could facilitate learning and acquisition of motor skills, as well as maintain and retain previously acquired motor skills, which may be beneficial for those who undergo TKA. It represents an incentive in the process of motor learning and the transfer of the mental scheme of the motion pattern into the process of movement execution. Measuring neuromuscular function pre- and post-TKA could be unique opportunity to provide empirical evidence about its additional therapeutic effects. Outcomes of proposed research project could serve to improve existing intervention programs applied in rehabilitation protocols following TKA surgery as well as other orthopedic interventions. This would also contribute to the successful return of individuals after an injury to their everyday working routine. We hypothesized that MI practice group will experience better both subjective and objective measures of functional performance compared to control group that will be subjected to routine physical therapy only.

Conditions

• Osteo Arthritis Knee
• Knee Arthroplasty

Interventions

OTHER

Motor imagery practice

In detail, they were advised to imagine maximal voluntary isometric contractions (MViC). MViC imagery practice was planned in a progressive manner. Thus, it was performed in two sets of 25 repetitions with 2 minutes of inter-sets rest period, for two weeks, and 10 additional repetitions were added on week three and four, respectively. Each MViC repetition was sustained for 5 seconds, followed by 5 seconds of inter-repetition rest periods. Additionally, after every fifth contraction, participants had a 20 seconds of rest. Following 5 days of MI practice, the participants were advised to take a break from MI for two consecutive days. After hospital discharge, the participants in the MIp group were supplied with an audio description of the exercises to be performed.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Slovenian Research Agency

  collaborator OTHER

• Science and Research Centre Koper

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Rado Pisot, PhD · Science and Research Centre Koper

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

50 Years

Max Age

80 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-08-21

Primary Completion

2018-06-01

Completion

2018-06-01

Countries

• Slovenia

Study Locations