Sustained benefits of blood flow restriction therapy in knee osteoarthritis rehabilitation: 1-year follow-up of a randomized controlled trial

Review written by Dr Nicholas Rolnick info

Key Points

  1. This study is the first 1-year RCT showing sustained blood flow restriction (BFR) benefits in knee OA beyond typical short-term exercise effects.
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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a major cause of global disability, impacting more than 250 million people worldwide (1). Traditional high-intensity exercise can be poorly tolerated, and appears to not exhibit any additional therapeutic benefit over low-intensity exercise alone (2).

An exercise technique called blood flow restriction (BFR) allows for low-load exercise to reproduce a high-intensity training stimulus without additional knee joint loading, producing comparable results to high-load exercise in clinical musculoskeletal populations (3). While BFR has been shown to be efficacious in these populations following short-term use (4–12 weeks), not much is known about its long-term efficacy in those with KOA.

This study evaluated whether 12 weeks of BFR-enhanced low-load resistance exercise produces sustained improvements in pain, function, and strength at 1-year post-intervention in individuals with symptomatic KOA.

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a major cause of global disability, impacting more than 250 million people worldwide.
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Blood flow restriction training is a safe, effective surrogate for high-load resistance training, capable of reproducing high-intensity benefits with reduced joint stress and pain sustained for up to a year.

METHODS

Design: 1-year follow-up of a randomized controlled trial (NCT04996680).

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