Ten per cent of the U.K. population over the age of 55 suffer from pain and decreased quality of life as a result of knee osteoarthritis (OA). Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) is a treatment that has a proven benefit; however a proportion of people, possibly as high as one in six, have less satisfactory outcomes after surgery. The type of operation or the type and intensity of the rehabilitation programme does not appear to account for all the variability in outcome, and there is growing evidence that patient factors (e.g. age, other medical problems) affects outcome.

We want to establish...

• Which patient factors effect outcome after Total Knee Replacement?
• Are there combinations of factors that are particularly important?
• How do we relate this to counselling before operations?
• Can we target any of these factors to improve overall outcome?

Experimental Plan

We plan to recruit approximately 500 patients who are going to have a Total Knee Replacement for knee osteoarthritis. We will then measure various patient factors before the operation (such as age, other medical problems, and coping strategies) using standardised questionnaires. Patients will be followed for one year after their operation to enable us to measure outcome in terms of how satisfied they are, how well the knee is performing, and what their general health is like. We will use this information to produce a tool that predicts individual outcome for this operation.

Status

Recruitment is planned to start in February 2013.
NHR Research Ethics Committees approval reference number 12/EM/0336