Evaluation of physiotherapy in a prospective cohort of early XXXX . Data from the DESIR cohort.

@entity1 @entity1691
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of physiotherapy on functional limitation in an observational cohort of early @entity1691 . METHODS: Design: prospective population-based cohort study. @entity1 : 708 @entity1 with early @entity1691 between 2007 and 2010 naive of TNF blockers. INTERVENTION: early physiotherapy defined by at least eight supervised sessions of physical therapy during the first six months. MEASUREMENTS: the primary outcome was functional improvement defined by a relative improvement of at least 20% in BASFI at six months. Secondary outcomes were improvement in BASFI at one and two years and ASAS20 response criteria at six months. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: a propensity score of having physiotherapy was developed and multivariate analysis using propensity score weighting were used to assess the effect of physiotherapy on outcome. RESULTS: Overall, 166 (24%) @entity1 had physiotherapy during the first six months. After using propensity score weighting, there was no functional improvement on the primary outcome in @entity1 treated with early physical therapy (relative risk [IC95%]: 1.15 [0.91-1.45]). No differences were observed on secondary outcomes (relative risk [IC95%]: 0.94 [0.80-1.11]). CONCLUSIONS: It seems there is no functional benefit for @entity1 with @entity1691 to be treated early by physiotherapy in daily practice, even though the efficacy of physiotherapy has been shown in several randomized controlled studies.
