Survey of footwears in Japanese elderly with knee osteoarthritis

Improper footwear can lead to painful knee and functional limitations for knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients. This study aimed to examine the use of different footwear types in Japanese knee OA and no knee symptomatic control elderly. The participants answered questionnaires comprised of demographic data, knee function and footwear survey. In the footwear survey, they chose the type of footwear and answered wearing time with it. The knee OA was classified according to American College of Rheumatology criteria. A total of 219 elderly participants were selected of which 69 who did not satisfy the criteria were excluded and the remainder were grouped as knee OA (97) and control group (53). The OA had a significant relationship to categorize the number of footwears adjusted by gender. Most subjects in both group used more than 3 footwears regularly. Knee OA had a smaller number of footwears. Total time of wearing shoes in a day was significantly shorter in the knee OA group (4.95 hours) compared to 6.67 hours in the control group. Few knee OA participants used sandal/Flip flop than the control individuals (23.2% in knee OA and 45.3% in control) and the knee OA group had a shorter time wearing time. Therapists should ask the wearing shoe and provide the shoe intervention to multiple footwear depending on individual patients' lifestyle.