Comparing the efficacy of non-invasive physical therapy in improving pain and joint function of knee osteoarthritis: A protocol for systematic review and network meta-analysis.

Background The incidence of knee osteoarthritis is increasing year by year, which seriously affects people's quality of life, especially the elderly, and has become a major public health problem. A lot of evidence shows that physical therapy has advantages in the treatment of knee joints, but there are a number of physical therapy schemes, and the efficacy of each scheme is different. This study will evaluate the clinical efficacy of different physical therapy regimens in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis (KOA) by means of network meta-analysis. Methods According to the search strategy, we will retrieve the randomized controlled studies of non-invasive physical therapy in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis from CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, China Biomedical medicine, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and The Cochrane Library databases. The retrieval time was from the establishment of the database to March 2021. We will assess the quality of the studies using the Cochrane Risk Bias Assessment Tool and assess the strength of the evidence using the GRADE methodology. All data analyses will be performed by RevMan5.3, GEMTC 0.14.3, and Stata 14.0. Results This study will evaluate the efficacy of different physical therapy in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis by evaluating the total response rate, pain relief degree, joint function score, quality of life score, adverse reactions, etc. Conclusions This study will provide a reliable evidence-based basis for the selection of better physical therapy for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis. Osf registration number DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/VX98B.