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Arthritis
Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 353149, 10 pages
doi:10.1155/2011/353149
An Eccentrically Biased Rehabilitation Program Early after TKA Surgery
1Department of Physical Therapy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84108, USA
2Department of Orthopaedics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84108, USA
Received 10 November 2010; Revised 10 January 2011; Accepted 17 February 2011
Academic Editor: Michael Hunt
Copyright © 2011 Robin L. Marcus et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Rehabilitation services are less-studied aspects of the management following total knee arthroplasty (TKA) despite long-term suboptimal physical functioning and chronic deficits in muscle function. This paper describes the preliminary findings of a six-week (12 session) eccentrically-biased rehabilitation program targeted at deficits in physical function and muscle function, initiated one month following surgery. A quasiexperimental, one group, pretest-posttest study with thirteen individuals (6 female, 7 male; mean age years) examined the effectiveness of an eccentrically-biased rehabilitation program. The program resulted in improvements in the primary physical function endpoints (SF-36 physical component summary and the six-minute walk test) with increases of 59% and 47%, respectively. Muscle function endpoints (knee extension strength and power) also increased 107% and 93%, respectively. Eccentrically-biased exercise used as an addition to rehabilitation may help amplify and accelerate physical function following TKA surgery.