Efecto de la telerehabilitación en los pacientes intervenidos con prótesis total de rodilla en la Fundación Hospital Son Llàtzer

Resumo

Knee osteoarthritis is a common health problem among the population over 65. Half of the symptomatic clinical cases are linked to disability. In many cases, they do not respond to conservative treatment, and they need total knee arthroplasty surgery (TKA). Physical therapy has been proved successful as rehabilitation treatment after this procedure. Unfortunately, some patients find it difficult to access a physiotherapy centre because of geographical dispersion, transportation problems or because of the long term physical damages of other diseases. These situations reduce the chances of a successful physical therapy treatment. This research aims to demonstrate whether the rehabilitation treatment (telerehabilitation) using information and telecommunications technologies (ICT) provides clinical and quality of life benefits, the same as the conventional rehabilitation treatment in patients who have been recently operated with TKA. For this reason, a therapeutic intervention has been carried out. Two groups of patients receive the same rehabilitation treatment, but it is applied in two different ways: one treatment is face to face in the hospital; and the other one is at patient's home, with the help of ICT. The results of this study confirmed that treatment by telerehabilitation (TeleRHB) is as effective as the conventional rehabilitation treatment in terms of muscle balance, range of movement, pain, degree of functionality and quality of life in patients who were operated with TKA. These data emphasizes that the implementation of TeleRHB can be a support to face to face physical therapy after surgery for total knee replacement, if necessary, for certain types of patients.