Brief self-exercise education for adults with chronic knee pain: A randomized controlled trial

Effective brief instructions for self-management of chronic knee pain are needed.

Forty-six participants with chronic knee pain were randomly allocated into two programmes: material-based education alone or brief self-exercise education (brief-See), which comprised a 100-minute instruction for self-exercise combined with compact pain education. Total function (KOOS4, 4-subscale average of knee injury and osteoarthritis outcome score), pain intensity (NRS, numeric rating scale), self-efficacy (PSEQ, pain self-efficacy questionnaire), and health-related quality of life (EQ-5D, European quality of life-5 dimensions) were evaluated at baseline and 4 and 12 weeks after the initial intervention. A generalized mixed linear model estimated average group differences in changes from baseline and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) using intention-to-treat principle.

Compared to material-based education alone, the brief-See provided significant additional improvements of 9.4% (95% CI: 2.3 to 16.4) on the KOOS4 and 5.4 points (0.3 to 10.4) on the PSEQ at 12 weeks but did not on the NRS and EQ-5D. Adherence and satisfaction were favourable in the brief-See without any notable adverse event.

Adding the brief-See to material-based education could be more acceptable and restore total function and self-efficacy, which could contribute to the self-management of chronic knee pain in primary care.