Use of a Smartphone-Based Care Platform After Primary Partial and Total Knee Arthroplasty: 1-Year Follow-Up of a...

The rise in demand of knee arthroplasty has led the industry to develop methods to decrease costs of care, such as novel methods of delivering physiotherapy, including smartphone-based exercise educational platforms. The purpose of this study was to determine the noninferiority of one such system after primary knee arthroplasty as compared to traditional in-person physiotherapy.

A prospective, multicenter randomized clinical trial was conducted comparing standard of care rehabilitation to a smartphone-based care platform after primary knee arthroplasty from January 2019 to February 2020. One-year patient outcomes, satisfaction scores, and utilizations of health care resources were analyzed. A total of 401 patients was available for analysis-241 in the control and 160 in the treatment group.

There were 194 (94.6%) patients in the control group who required 1 or more physiotherapy visits compared to only 97 (60.6%) patients in the treatment group (P < .001). Emergency department visits within 1 year occurred in 13 (5.4%) patients and 2 (1.3%) patients in the control and treatment groups, respectively (P = .03). The change in mean Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score for joint replacement scores at 1 year was similar between both the groups (32.1 ± 1 6.8 versus 30.1 ± 18.1, P = .32).

Implementation of this smartphone/smart watch care platform showed similar outcomes to traditional care models at 1 year postoperative. Traditional physiotherapy and emergency department visits occurred at much lower rates in this cohort, which could alleviate the need for health care dollars spent by reducing postoperative costs and enhancing communication across the health care system.