Patients who undergo either primary or revision total hip arthroplasty (THA) mainly expect improvement in pain, function/activity and quality of life. The purpose of the study was to measure the degree of short-term and medium-term improvement and the differences in patient-reported outcome that can be expected in patients undergoing revision THA, compared to patients undergoing primary THA.
In this study, the results of patient-reported outcome measurements were compared in 124 matched patients, who underwent revision surgery and primary THA between 01/2007 and 12/2009. Assessment was performed at short-term and medium-term follow-up and included the WOMAC score, the UCLA activity score and EuroQol scores.
6 months after revision THA, the mean total WOMAC score improved by 22.1 points, the UCLA activity score by 0.6 points and the EuroQol-Index by 0.2 points. After primary THA, the improvement was 41.4 points on the WOMAC, 1.1 points on the UCLA and 0.3 points on the EuroQol-Index. At medium-term follow-up, 3.6 years after revision surgery and 2.3 years after primary THA, patients undergoing revision THA showed significantly less overall improvement, as well as lower final outcome scores, than patients undergoing primary THA.
Patients undergoing revision arthroplasty, as well as patients undergoing primary THA, can expect major improvement in function, activity and quality of life postoperatively. However, overall level of improvement, as well as peak attainable outcome levels, are lower after revision surgery than after primary THA. Appropriate information for patients who undergo hip revision surgery is necessary in order to avoid unrealistic expectations and postoperative dissatisfaction.