Effect of a functional training program and ultrasound in patients with osteoarthritis of the hip (Fullbright Project)

this project aims to evaluate the effect of a functional training program combined with therapeutic ultrasound on pain intensity, muscle strength, gait biomechanics and functionality in people with hip osteoarthritis. To achieve this, a controlled clinical trial type experimental design with triple masking is proposed, which will include two comparison groups each with 25 people with a medical diagnosis of hip osteoarthritis degree of severity II and III and clinical criteria of the American College of Rheumatology. Each participant will be assessed for pain intensity, muscle strength, gait biomechanics and functionality before and after the 16 intervention sessions. The intensity of pain and functionality will be evaluated additionally in sessions 5 and 10. Group l will receive 16 sessions of a functional training program oriented to activities of daily living and the application of therapeutic ultrasound prior to the functional training program versus group ll which will receive 16 sessions of the same functional training program. The functional training program includes warm-up, followed by a functional circuit with muscle strengthening exercises for the main hip groups oriented to activities of daily living and will end with muscle stretching. The therapeutic ultrasound will be applied prior to functional training with an intensity of 2.2 W/cm 2 , frequency of 1 MHz and application time of 4 minutes. The average temporal spatial intensity will correspond to 0.44 W/cm 2 , the treatment area will be equivalent to 2 times the effective radiation area in the anterior, medial and lateral hip area. In the statistical analysis of the results, the differences in the three evaluation moments for pain intensity and functionality will be evaluated with an ANOVA of repeated measurements; the differences between the initial and final measurement of muscle strength, the biomechanical variables of gait and functionality will be evaluated with a paired t- Student and with the Wilcoxon test. Differences between group l and ll will be evaluated with a t-Student for independent samples. Significant changes in the output variables will be adjusted by the covariates with binomial regressions, taking into account a significance level of p<0.05.