After more than 4 decades experience of total knee arthroplasty (TKA), there is still a group of patients who are not satisfied with the outcome. In spite of the improvement of many aspects around the procedure, for unexplainable reasons, patient dissatisfaction is still approximately the same. We conducted this study to analyze correlations between preoperative psychological aspects and dissatisfaction after TKA.
A total of 186 patients were operated with a primary TKA. Patients filled out the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Visual Analog Pain Scale (0-100), and Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score preoperatively and 4 years postoperatively. Four years postoperatively, the patients also scored their satisfaction degree with the outcome of the surgery.
Of 186 patients, 27 (15%) reported that they were dissatisfied or uncertain with the result of their TKA 4 years postoperatively. Sixteen of those 27 patients had reported anxiety/depression preoperatively compared with 11 of 159 (7%) in the satisfied or very satisfied groups. Patients with preoperative anxiety or depression had more than 6 times higher risk to be dissatisfied compared with patients with no anxiety or depression (P < .001). Patients with deep prosthetic infection had 3 times higher risk to be dissatisfied with the operation outcome (P = .03). Dissatisfied patients had 1-day longer hospital stay compared with the satisfied group (P < .001).
Preoperative anxiety and/or depression is an import predictor for dissatisfaction after TKA. Psychological assessment and treatment preoperatively might improve degree of satisfaction.