Measurement of expectations regarding exercise therapy of patients with hip and knee osteoarthritis: A scoping review

While exercise therapy generally yields positive outcomes in patients with hip or knee osteoarthritis (HOA or KOA), individual results vary. Expectations may influence treatment results, but research on this topic is scarce. Therefore, this study aimed to describe methods to assess pre-treatment expectations of patients with HOA or KOA with respect to exercise therapy.

Scoping review, with the Pubmed, Embase, CINAHL and Cochrane databases searched for original clinical studies of any design reporting a method or instrument to assess expectations of exercise therapy in patients with HOA or KOA. Data extraction from selected studies concerned study characteristics and the method or instrument used, as well as their content, categorized into expectations of structure, process or outcomes of exercise therapy treatment.

Twenty-nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Twenty-three different methods used to address expectations were identified, 3 of which had a qualitative nature (interviews) and 20 concerned questionnaires. There was a large variation in number of items and measurement scales in the identified methods. Nine methods addressed expectations of outcomes of treatment, 7 addressed both outcomes and the process/structure of treatment. One instrument was found to measure willingness to receive exercise rather than expectations. For the remaining 6 instruments no content nor aspects measured were reported.

In the literature, apart from interviews, mainly quantitative methods have been used to measure expectations with regard to exercise therapy in patients with HOA or KOA. Most of their content concerned the outcomes of care, rather than its structure and/or process.