Page 151 - The value of total hip and knee arthroplasties for patients

Return to work after total hip and knee arthroplasty: results from a clinical study
age of 65 years (the retirement age in the Netherlands at the time the study was conducted) were used.
Assessments
The preoperative questionnaires were administered by the treating physician, and the postoperative questionnaire was sent by regular mail.A telephone interview was scheduled if the answers regarding work status in either the preoperative or follow- up questionnaires were incomplete.These telephone interviews were conducted by one of the researchers (CSL). Sociodemographic and general patient characteristics were only gathered preoperatively.
Sociodemographic and general patient characteristics
Sociodemographic characteristics were recorded preoperatively and included: age (years), sex, length (cm) and weight (kg) to calculate the body mass index, level of education (low: primary school, lower vocational education; medium: lower general secondary school,intermediate vocational education;or high:higher general secondary school, higher vocational education, university) and marital status (living alone; yes/no).
Work status
At the preoperative assessment, all patients were asked to indicate whether they
had a paid job (yes/no). If not, they were asked to indicate whether they were 8 pensioner, housewife/houseman or unemployed.
If they were working, they were requested to provide information on the following aspects of their working situation: (a) amount of hours currently working per week; (b) being self-employed or wage earner; (c) current complete or partial sick leave or complete or partial sick leave over the past 12 months, with sick leave defined as absenteeism related to the hip or knee complaints and reported to the employer; if yes, duration of 4 weeks or more (yes/no); (d) presence of work adaptions yes/no; if yes: change in tasks, performing fewer tasks, changes in working hours or other work- related adaptions or devices (all these questions could be answered with yes or no); (e) receipt of partial disability benefits related to hip or knee complaints (yes/no).
In the follow-up assessment, the same questions were used, with in addition: (f) working currently (yes/no); (g) duration until return to work for the first time (weeks); (h) number of hours working per week when starting to work for the
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