Investigation of the relationship among clinical symptoms, age, gender, body mass and radiological severity in patients with knee osteoarthritist

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship among radiological severity of osteoarthritis (OA), age, body mass index (BMI), gender and clinical findings in subjects with knee OA. One hundred and eighteen subjects consisting of 17 men and 101 women, mean aged 56.44±8.36, have phase I-II-III and IV knee OA according to Kellgren-Lawrence (K-L) radiological classification were included in this study. WOMAC index (Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index) was used to evaluate pain, stiffness, physical function. According to results of regression analysis, significant variables were BMI (p=0.015) and radiological phase (p=0.001) on WOMAC pain score, gender (p=0.005) and radiological phase (p=0.010) on WOMAC stiffness score, gender (p=0.019) and BMI (0.004) on WOMAC function score, gender (p=0.014), BMI (p=0.004) and radiological phase (0.014) on WOMAC total score. According to results of correlation analysis there were no correlation between subjects’ ages and WOMAC pain (rho=-0.003, p=0.975), stiffness (rho=-0.012, p=0.898), function (rho=0.015, p=0.871) and total scores (rho=0.009, p=0.921). There were weak correlation between radiological phase and WOMAC pain (rho=0.327, p=0.001), stiffness (rho=0.278, p=0.05), function (rho=0.247, p=0.007) and total (rho=0.294, p=0.001) scores. There were weak correlations between BMI and WOMAC pain (rho=0.354, p=0.001), function (rho=0.356, p=0.001), total (rho=0.361, p=0.001) scores. This study reveals that there is a weak correlation between radiological classification and functional status. These results indicate that radiographic and clinical symptoms have to be discussed independently to determine the treatment of knee OA and evaluating clinical symptoms and functional status should gain importance in physiotherapy.