Randomized Controlled Trial

Second-year resident, John Wilson, MD, is leading a randomized controlled trial to determine whether hydrotherapy plus manual physical therapy (MPT) combined with a home exercise program is more effective than home exercise alone in reducing pain and disability among adult patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee.

Stacey Balousek, the project manager, is working with John to recruit 80 adults, 40-70 years old diagnosed with knee OA by American College of Rheumatology criteria UW Sports Medicine clinics.

Twenty participants will be randomly assigned to a Control group which will include the usual therapy of home exercise program alone, and 60 subjects will be assigned to an Intervention group which will add hydrotherapy plus and manual physical therapy to the home exercise program. The trial hopes to improve the intervention group's quality of life, reduce pain and use of pain medication and improve outcomes such as self-paced six-minute walk distance, knee range of motion, plain radiographs of the knee at baseline.

David Bernhardt, MD, Tom Best, MD, Gregory Landry, MD and Kathleen Carr, MD are all working with John through the sports medicine program and Mike Fleming, MD and Tom Best, MD are serving as his faculty mentors. Kyla Galles and Colleen Wall are the Physical Therapy student volunteers, Jodi Janczewski and Heather Hartwig Stokes, MSPT, CSCS are the Physical Therapists.