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Keywords: osteoarthritis, kinetotherapy, FNP techniques, functional parameters, pain, walking
Abstract
Numerous studies on people with gonarthrosis refer only to electrotherapy, shock-wave therapy, radon baths, and classical physical exercise; very few studies recall only the role of facilitating techniques in restoring functional knee parameters. This study was conducted on a total of 12 subjects diagnosed with gonarthrosis divided into 2 groups, group A followed a classical recovery program and group B a program consisting of facilitation techniques for a period of 6 months with a frequency of 3 sessions per week. The results obtained confirm the hypothesis that the parameters tested: pain, joint mobility, muscle strength and stability were noticeably improved in group B those who used FNP techniques compared to group A and the duration of the session was only 35 minutes at group B, compared to 55 minutes group A.
1.Introduction
Knee arthrosis (gonarthrosis) is a degenerative condition that consists in progressive destruction of articular cartilage from bone extremities of the femur, tibia and patella. In recent in-depth studies of knee pathology, knee arthritis has been found to affect not only hyaline cartilage but also the whole osteo-articular mechanism. Early diagnosed, the destruction of articular cartilage can be stagnated by associating the medical treatment with electrotherapy and kinetotherapy. The use of neuro-muscular and proprioceptive facilitating techniques may be the most effective solution for maintaining articular mobility and muscle strength.
According to Marcu and Matei (2005) the neuroprioroptic facilitation techniques are based on spatio-temporal summation mechanisms of the peripheral stimulus origin with the impulses that trigger the voluntary movement. Facilitating techniques address the neuromuscular device and reprezent the encouraging voluntary motor response when stimulating the proprioceptors at the muscles, skin, tendons, joints level. The main purpose role is to regularizate of a motoneuron discharges.
Gonartrosis has become one of the most common diseases of the knee on the earth; therefore more attention has been paid over the past few years. Generally, the frequency of gonarthrosis is much higher than coxarthrosis. The first who make a statistic of the incidence of gonarthrosis was Heine, who studied several cases of knee osteoarthritis in patients over 70 years old, and concluded that the incidence of gonarthrosis on men was 20%, and on women 44.2%. (Popescu & Ionescu, 1997).