20 subjects with symptomatic medial compartment knee OA, with grade 2 to 4 on Kellgren and Lawrence scale, and showing willing to wear a functional knee brace will be recruited into this study. Another 20 subjects with comparable body height, weight, and sex will be served as a control group. All of the subjects received 4 weeks' rehabilitation treatment (3 times a week). VAS pain score, WOMAC index, and SF-36 will be evaluated before the treatment, and 1 month, and 3 months after the start of treatment. Patients' satisfaction will be evaluated at 1 month, and 3 months after start of treatment. Patients' compliance and any adverse events due to wearing of the functional knee brace will also be reported. A 2-by-3, 2-way mixed-model analysis of variance, which had 1 between-subject factor (group: knee brace + PT and PT only) and 1 within subject factor (evaluation time:T0, T1, T2) , was performed. Pair-wise comparisons between groups were performed using an independent t test (if in normal distribution) or Mann-Whitney U test (if not in normal distribution). Investigators hypothesize that addition of a functional knee brace would improve rehabilitation outcome in subjects with knee OA.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of functional knee brace in the subjects with medial compartment knee OA.