Three Out of Ten Working Patients Expect No Clinical Improvement of Their Ability to Perform Work-Related Knee-Demanding Activities After Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Multicenter Study.
Yvonne van Zaanen, Rutger C I van Geenen, Thijs M J Pahlplatz and 12 others
PMID 30539374WHAT IT FOUND
Most working patients expecting total knee replacement believed their work-related knee activities would improve.
Still, 28% expected no meaningful improvement, and many expected severe difficulty with kneeling, crouching, and clambering.
Key findings
01Of 236 analysed working patients, 171 (72%) expected a clinically important improvement in work-related knee-demanding ability 6 months after TKA.
0228% expected no clinically important improvement, and 14% expected no improvement or a worse performance.
03Patients expected severe difficulty most often with kneeling (34%), crouching (30%) and clambering (17%) 6 months after TKA.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study reports patient expectations before surgery, not measured ability 6 months after surgery. Of 801 contacted patients, 461 did not participate, and the paper does not say why. The sample may have excluded patients with difficulty reading or writing, so less educated working patients may be underrepresented. The questionnaire did not measure how often, how long or how hard each patient performed knee-demanding work tasks. Patients completed the questionnaire at different times before surgery, and 26 patients did not know their surgery date. The sample is limited to Dutch working patients listed for total knee arthroplasty.
Declared interests
The paper is labelled as supported by non-U.S. government funding, and the supplied text gives no author conflict-of-interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these results as proof that total knee replacement improves work-related knee-demanding ability. The study measured expectations before surgery, and 28% of patients expected no clinically important improvement.