The Current Status of Non-surgical Treatment for Knee Osteoarthritis Patients in the Community: a Multi-center Cross-sectional Study

Background Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a common clinical condition with a decades-long course. Long-term and personalised health management in community hospitals is the best way to prevent and treat KOA, and non-surgical treatment is an effective way to slow joint degeneration and postpone joint replacement surgery. Objective To understand the population characteristics, clinical staging and treatment modality characteristics of the population attending community hospitals for knee osteoarthritis, in order to provide a basis for optimising the treatment protocol for knee osteoarthritis at the grassroots level. Method All streets in the urban area of Beijing were randomly selected for the study using the whole cluster sampling method, and Hepingli Street in Dongcheng District, Beijing was censored for all patients who attended all community hospitals (7) belonging to the street from January to June 2022, and general information, medical history, personal history, clinical staging, K-L grading and treatment modalities were collected. Results A total of 3 615 KOA patients were included in this study, including 1 327 males (36.71%) and 2 288 females (63.29%), aged (71.8±13.3) years. There were 867 cases (23.98%) in the onset period, 2009 cases (55.57%) in the remission period and 739 cases (20.45%) in the rehabilitation period. Gender and age of patients with different clinical stages were not correlated with clinical stages (P>0.05), while BMI (K=0.235) and KL grading (K=0.406) were correlated with clinical stages (P