BACKGROUND: The correlation between bone mineral density (BMD) and rehabilitation treatment benefits understanding the rehabilitation progress, and provides a basis for therapist to establish or correct the program. However, there are few reported regarding the influence of rehabilitative treatment on human BMD. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of rehabilitation on BMD in patients with functional disorders of knee joint caused by lower limb fracture and compare the gender differences. METHODS: A total of 80 patients who had the dysfunction of knee joint caused by fracture of lower limb underwent internal or external fixation in Department of Rehabilitation, Tianjin Hospital. They were randomly assigned to rehabilitation and control groups. The rehabilitation group started rehabilitation training at 4 weeks after operation, including active exercise, passive exercise, and various physical therapies for 20 weeks. The control group did not do rehabilitation training during the 24 weeks. At 4 and 24 weeks after operation, the BMD of femoral neck, L2 to L4 and ward's area in two groups was determined by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, and range of motion of the knee joint was measured. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: BMD of femoral neck, L2 to L4 and ward's area in both groups decreased. But the BMD in rehabilitation group was greater than the control group (p < 0.01), and the improvement in range of motion was significantly increased compared with the control group (p < 0.01). The results showed that rehabilitation effectively attenuated bone mineral substance loss during rehabilitation from lower limb fracture, reduced BMD decrease, effectively prevented and improved osteoporosis due to immobilization. Moreover, there were no gender differences.

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