Effect of Applications on Smart Phone on Post-operative Rehabilitation of Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Randomized Clinical Trail

Apart from surgical technique, the outcome of total knee arthroplasty (TKA) also largely depend on adequate rehabilitation and subsequent functional recovery after surgery.Rehabilitation affects or even determines various performance of post-operative knee, including knee range-of-motion (ROM), muscle strength, functional independence, all of which subsequently affect patients' quality of life. Conventional way of rehabilitation is exercise therapy, which rely on guidance of therapists and the self-efficacy of patients.

An application (APP) on smart phone was designed for people received TKA to play the role of guider and help improving patients' self-efficacy. This is a single-centre randomized clinical trial, with an anticipation of 200 patients with knee osteoarthritis enrolled, who will be randomly assigned into experiment group or control group. The patients in the experiment group will be introduced to this APP and requested to use it regularly, while the patients in the control group will receive pure conventional rehabilitation. Primary outcome includes Visual analogue scale (VAS) of pain, knee society score (KSS), ROM, ability of daily living (ADL) before operation and at 2 weeks and 6 weeks after surgery. All potential covariates of those two groups, such as age, sex, and pre-operative kellgren-lawrence scores would be matched by completely randomize.