Home-based Exercise Program(HEP) Vs. Institution-based Occupational Therapy(IOT) in improving hand skills in post Collies' fractures: A comparative study.

AIMS: 1. To evaluate the effectiveness of home based exercise program 2. To involve the patient & his family members in treatment program. 3. To enhance self esteem of patients 4. To restore or reinforce functional capabilities. Hypothesis: Home-based exercise program in colles' fractures is also effective like institutional based occupational therapy. Methodology: Subjects: 30 nos. Procedure: A screening had been done among post colles' fracture patients those are attending outdoor occupational therapy department, NIOH with the help of FAS (Functional Assessment Scale), which is based on pain and functional capacity, and randomly choose 30no patients within the age group of 25 - 45years. Among them 15 are included in the control group and 15 in the experimental group. The subjects in each group were evaluated pre therapeutically by using the following instruments. Instrumentation: • VAS • MMDT • Tracker version 5 software (Goniometer, Dynamometer, Pinch meter) Intervention: After pre therapeutic evaluation, the control group underwent institution based Occupational therapy(IOT) where as the experimental group adhere to home based exercise program(HEP). The followup evaluation was done after 6-weeks for each group to find out the improvement in hand skills. Data analysis: SPSS version-13 was used. Paired t-test for each variables are comparatively measured where p < 0.05. RESULTS: This study significantly shows that self introduced home based exercise program and need based institutional occupational therapy both are equally effective in improving hand skills. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the results of the present study, it can be concluded that both HEP and IOT are equally important for reducing pain & stiffness and also for increasing pain free ROM, muscle strength and hand skills in post colles' fractures.