TEMPO

Background

Hip and/or knee osteoarthritis is a common and disabling condition among older adults. Our population is ageing rapidly, and over 80-year-olds are the fastest growing age group. As a result, the number of people living with hip/knee osteoarthritis, and the accompanying costs, are increasing dramatically.

Exercise is recommended for all people with osteoarthritis. However, these recommendations are based on clinical trials including people aged between 60 and 70 years. Findings in younger populations cannot reliably be applied to people aged 80 or older, due to the broad range of abilities people have at this age, the increase in other health conditions and the rapid loss of muscle that occurs beyond 70 years of age.

We hypothesise that to optimise health outcomes, an exercise programme should be tailored to target both hip/knee osteoarthritis and comorbidities. This feasibility trial will inform decision-making about proceeding to a large randomised controlled trial to determine if the programme is clinically and cost-effective compared to best-practice usual care in the NHS.

Aims

To determine if it is feasible to conduct a future large RCT to test the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a 12-week tailored exercise programme, compared to usual care, in improving functional status in adults aged 80 years and over with hip/knee OA and comorbidities.

Feasibility objectives are to assess:

• Patient engagement with the trial, assessed by recruitment, and retention in the trial.
• Acceptability of the interventions, assessed by adherence to the intervention and participant and physiotherapist qualitative interviews.

Study design

A randomised multicentre feasibility study with an embedded qualitative study.

trial publications

The study protocol publication can be found here.