Manual therapy, exercise therapy, or both, in addition to usual care, for osteoarthritis of the hip or knee: a randomized controlled trial. 1: clinical effectiveness

This report has been verified by one or more authors of the original publication.

60 patients with hip or knee osteoarthritis (OA) were randomized to one of four groups, in order to compare the efficacy of different non-surgical procedures on OA. Patients either received usual care, usual care plus manual therapy, usual care plus exercise therapy, or usual care plus a combination of exercise and manual therapy. Following treatment over a 1 year period, results indicated that the greatest improvement in pain and disability was achieved with manual physiotherapy. Although not as large, a significant improvement was also seen with exercise therapy. There was no added benefit of a combination treatment with manual and exercise physiotherapy.