Articles related to Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation

In a study of more than 800 rural-living men and women with knee osteoarthritis, an 18-month program of diet and exercise versus attention control yielded an average 14-pound greater weight loss in the test group – but not much difference in pain magnitude.

These specialties had the highest proportion of doctors still making student loan payments, per the 2022 Medscape report: Emergency Medicine (31%) Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (31%) Pediatrics (31%) Neurology (28%) Otolaryngology (28%) Family Medicine (28%) For the least debt-burdened: Pulmonary Medicine (10%) Public Health & Preventive Medicine (11%) Rheumatology (12%) Diabetes & Endocrinology (15%) Dermatology (16%) Cardiology (16%)

In a study involving 212 adults with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis, an unsupervised online yoga program delivered via prerecorded videos over 12 weeks netted improved physical function vs. the control group. At 12 weeks, knee stiffness, quality of life, and arthritis self-efficacy improved more with yoga than the control intervention. Benefits were not maintained at 24 weeks. Adverse events were minor.

The founding editor of Comprehensive Clinical Nephrology teases out for us our physiologic response to salt, sugar, fat, and water that creates a recipe for obesity – a recipe being used daily by many Americans with obvious results. His recommendation? “Drinking more water and reducing salt intake offer cheap, easy and healthy strategies that may prevent or treat obesity.” Click to see the evidence behind the conclusion.

Patients who survive severe intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) typically have poor functional outcome in the short term and understanding of future recovery has been limited. These findings indicate that hospital events significantly influenced long-term functional recovery after ICH and IVH, suggesting that aggressive ICH and IVH resolution and prevention of systemic complications and cerebral ischemic injury may promote better outcomes among patients with ICH and IVH with high clinical severity.

The knee arthritis meta-analysis reviewed 169 trials involving 21,163 patients, with the evidence demonstrating viscosupplementation is associated with a clinically irrelevant reduction in pain intensity and with an increased risk of serious adverse events compared with placebo. For the meniscus study, the commentary may sum it up best: “Multiple studies, including several with sham surgeries as a control have shown repeatedly over the previous 2 decades that surgery is not superior to physical therapy, yet the issue and use of surgery persist.”