Practical Applications
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We found that Kaltenborn manual therapy decreases pain in the CMC joint and scaphoid bone with secondary CMC OA of the dominant hand.
Twenty-nine subjects aged 70 to 90 years with secondary CMC OA in the dominant hand with clinical pathologic history of more than 10 years were recruited from the Department of Physical Therapy, “Residenze Sanitarie Assistenziali” (RR.SS.AA), which depends on Azienda Sanitaria Locale 3 (A.S.L 3), Collegno (Italy). Patients were randomly assigned into either a treated or a sham group. The baseline demographic characteristics of the population are listed in Table 1. Because the patients were
Twenty-nine patients with CMC OA, aged 70 to 90 years (mean, 80.83 ± 7.44 years), were included in this study and assigned to 1 of 2 groups who received either Kaltenborn mobilization technique (n = 14) or sham (n = 15). All treated patients were females. Table 2 shows the flow diagram of subject progress through the study and the followed criteria. All subjects were right-hand dominant. No significant differences between the groups (P > .05) were found in key demographic variables and baseline
Our findings show that the posterior-anterior gliding with distraction of the CMC joint technique significantly produced immediate hypoalgesic effects and increased strength that lasted for first week after treatment. This is the first report of the use of this mobilization technique for the treatment of CMC OA.
In conclusion, this study provided new evidence that accessory mobilization with distraction of the human osteoarthritic CMC joint has both an immediate local and a widespread hypoalgesic effects. Therefore, joint mobilization may be an effective means of reducing osteoarthritic pain and may potentially improve motor function.
This work was supported by personal funds of JHV and in part by a grant from the J. Robert Cade Foundation to GBS. No conflicts of interest were reported for this study. We found that Kaltenborn manual therapy decreases pain in the CMC joint and scaphoid bone with secondary CMC OA of the dominant hand.Practical Applications