PARQVE Prior to Total Knee Replacement

Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is generally advocated as an effective operation to alleviate symptoms in people suffering from knee osteoarthritis (OAJ). Such statements are often made from a medical and biomechanical perspective (in terms of low complication rates and prosthesis failure) instead of the patient's perspective (pain and functional outcome). Hawker et al. Demonstrated that almost half of the patients submitted to TKA had poor results regarding pain and function; these were mainly elderly patients with additional comorbidities.

Elderly patients, a majority of the population submitted to TKA, have a lower capacity for adaptation to hospitalization and surgical stress. Exercise before cardiac and abdominal elective surgery was shown to reduce the number of complications.

Pre- and postoperative physical therapy may increase the functional recovery of patients undergoing TKA. To date, a number of reviews have been available that demonstrate that preoperative exercise in subjects awaiting TKA has little value in postoperative outcomes. However, most of the included studies investigated the efficacy of preoperative exercise in generally healthy adults, while, in essence, eligible individuals with comorbidities and / or elderly were excluded. Therefore, to understand and appreciate the true potential of preoperative therapeutic exercise, the investigators needs to evaluate studies that included individuals at highest risk for disappointing outcomes after surgery. Two studies are available that investigated the merits of preoperative exercise in patients with increased risk of late functional recovery or increased length of hospital stay. Topp et al. investigated the efficacy of the therapeutic exercise in patients with low preoperative functional level pending TKA. This study demonstrated that, after 3 months, the functional performance level and strength of the preoperative exercise group was greater than the control group. Hansen et al. have demonstrated that, in the context of FAST TRACK, the preoperative therapeutic exercise in individuals with a higher risk of delayed recovery may further decrease hospital stay (one additional day) after TKA.

Even excluding patients with comorbidities Villadsen et al. demonstrated that patients undergoing an exercise program before TKA recovered faster after surgery.

In previous work performed by the authors, patients submitted to an education and physical activity program showed improvement in WOMAC, which can be reproduced in any basic health care unit.

Thus the investigators believe that the sum of an education program associated with preoperative exercises needs to be considered as a tool to help recovery after TKA, as it is an inexpensive, well tolerated and easily implemented intervention in UBS.