Orthoses versus gait retraining: Immediate response in improving physical performance measures in healthy and medial knee osteoarthritic adults

The conservative techniques of treating knee osteoarthritis (kOA) include wearing orthoses such as knee braces and laterally wedged insoles and applying gait modification techniques such as toe-in gait and toe-out gait. This study aimed at assessing the immediate effects of these techniques in improving physical function of healthy and kOA participants. Five Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) recommended performance-based tests were randomly applied to measure physical function: (1) 30-second chair stand test (30CST), (2) 40-m (4 × 10) fast-paced walk test (40FPW), (3) stair climb test (SCT), (4) timed up and go test (TUGT) and (5) 6-minute walk test (6MWT) during a single-visit on 20 healthy and 20 kOA patients (age: 59.5 ± 7.33 and 61.5 ± 8.63 years, BMI: 69.95 ± 9.86 and 70.45 ± 8.80 kg/m2). The interventions included natural gait, toe-out gait, toe-in gait, laterally wedged insoles and knee brace. Analysis was performed through repeated-measures ANOVA and independent sample t-test. 30CST and TUGT showed no significant differences for the five test conditions (p > 0.05). Toe-out showed profound effects via pairwise comparison in impairing the physical function while knee brace improved it during 40FPW, SCT and 6MWT. In general, all the tested conservative techniques except laterally wedged insoles had immediate effects on physical performance measures in both healthy and medial knee osteoarthritis participants. The valgus knee brace improved the parameters the most, while toe-out gait impaired them the most. Future studies can develop strategies for improving gait retraining methods on the basis of issues identified by this study.