Patient satisfaction after total knee replacement—still a challenge

During a validation process of the Swedish Knee Arthroplasty Register (SKAR), living registered patients were sent a questionnaire to ask if they had been reoperated on. This gave an opportunity to pose a simple four-point question with respect to patient satisfaction which 95% of patients answered. We analyzed the answers of patients operated on between 1981 and 1995 and found that only 8% of the patients were dissatisfied regarding their knee arthroplasty 2–17 years postoperatively. The satisfaction rate was constant, regardless of when the operation had been performed during the 15-year period. The proportion of satisfied patients was affected by the preoperative diagnosis, patients operated on for a long-standing disease more often being satisfied than those with a short disease-duration. There was no difference in proportions of satisfied patients, whether they had primarily been operated on with a total knee arthroplasty (TKA) or a medial unicompartmental arthroplasty (UKA). For TKAs performed with primary patellar resurfacing, there was a higher ratio of satisfied patients than for TKAs not resurfaced, but this increased ratio diminished with time passed since the primary operation. Unrevised knees had a higher proportion of satisfied patients than knees that had been subject to revision, and among patients revised for medial UKA, the proportion of satisfied patients was higher than among patients revised for TKA. We conclude that satisfaction after knee arthroplasty is stable and long-lasting in unrevised cases and that even after revision most patients are satisfied.

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