Page 101 - The value of total hip and knee arthroplasties for patients

Patients’ pre-operative general and specific outcome expectations predict postoperative pain and function after total knee and total hip arthroplasties
this study therefore is to examine whether expectations have a predictive value when assessed as one of the candidate predictive variables alongside other clinical, demographic and psychosocial predictors that are commonly measured in clinical practice and have been shown to predict post-operative outcomes.
Patients’expectations are a multifaceted and complex construct[30;31],consequently measurement is challenging. Previous systematic reviews identified that patients’
expectations for TKA and THA are measured in many different ways[14;32]. Some measurement methods are more targeted at very specific (functional) outcomes,
while others assess expectations for outcome in a more general sense. Iles et al. [11]
found the specificity of the expectation queried to be of influence on the strength
of the association between expectations and outcomes. This may be one of the
reasons of the variability in the results of the studies examining the relationship
between expectations and outcomes in TKA and THA. Therefore, the second aim
of this study is to assess whether specificity of the expected outcome assessed 6 influences the predictive value of expectations on outcomes.
Methods
Participants and Procedures
This study was part of a larger prospective cohort study on patient reported outcomes of THA and TKA. The larger study included consecutive patients undergoing THA or TKA in the Rijnland Hospital in Leiderdorp, the Netherlands between October 2010 and September 2012.
Assessments were done preoperatively and 12 months after surgery. From July 2011 until September 2012 patients participating in that study received additional pre-operative questions concerning pre-operative expectations about the outcome of surgery, hope and optimism. The larger study, as well as the extension was reviewed and approved by the local hospital Review Board of the Rijnland Hospital, Leiderdorp in the Netherlands (registration number 10/07).
The current paper reports on analyses done with the subset of patients that answered the additional questions. Consecutive eligible patients undergoing a
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