Objectives: To investigate the applicability of thermography as severity measurement in the patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee.
Methods: Data were obtained from 80 patiens with OA of the knee. They were asked to answer two disease-specific...
Objectives: To investigate the applicability of thermography as severity measurement in the patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee.
Methods: Data were obtained from 80 patiens with OA of the knee. They were asked to answer two disease-specific questionnaire (Western Ontario and McMaster Universities (WOMAC) OA index, Lequesne's Functional Index (LEI)), one generic instrument (Korean Health Assessment Questionnaire (KHAQ)), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) pain intensities in order to assess the severity of disease, quality of life, and degree of pain and taken thermography in standardized environment before and after treatment, respectively.
Results: The thermal differences between ipsilateral side and contralateral side in lateral aspect, medial aspect, patella region and suprapatella of both knees were correlated with pain lesion sites. Age, duration of disease, duration of morning stiffness, sex, and crepitus of knee were not correlated with the thermal differences of each regions. And also LFI, WOMAC, WOMAC pain subscale, WOMAC stiffness subscale, WOMAC physical function, KHAQ, were not correlated with the thermal differences of each region. But, the changes of VAS pain intensities were highly correlated with the thermal differences of each regions, especially in patelaa and suprapatella of knees after teratment.
Conclusions: Although several specific evaluation indices for osteoarthritis of knee were not correlated with the degree of thermal differences between both knees, the differences of pain intensity (VAS) were quit correlated with thermal differences after treatment. And infrared thermography might be a very useful devices fot the evaluation of OA of knee and its treatment. Further study on the thermography on OA of the knee in more size of patients with appropriate severity grade and the standardization of analysis of thermographic data were recommended.