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. 2021 Feb 25;10(5):907.
doi: 10.3390/jcm10050907.

Long-Term Patient-Related Quality of Life after Knee Periprosthetic Joint Infection

Nike Walter  1   2 , Markus Rupp  1 , Katja Hierl  1 , Matthias Koch  1 , Maximilian Kerschbaum  1 , Michael Worlicek  1 , Volker Alt  1
Affiliations

Long-Term Patient-Related Quality of Life after Knee Periprosthetic Joint Infection

Nike Walter et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

Background: We aimed to evaluate the impact of knee periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) by assessing the patients' long-term quality of life and explicitly their psychological wellbeing after successful treatment.

Methods: Thirty-six patients with achieved eradication of infection after knee PJI were included. Quality of life was evaluated with the EQ-5D and SF-36 outcome instruments as well as with an ICD-10 based symptom rating (ISR) and compared to normative data.

Results: At a follow-up of 4.9 ± 3.5 years the mean SF-36 score was 24.82 ± 10.0 regarding the physical health component and 46.16 ± 13.3 regarding the mental health component compared to German normative values of 48.36 ± 9.4 (p < 0.001) and 50.87 ± 8.8 (p = 0.003). The mean EQ-5D index reached 0.55 ± 0.33 with an EQ-5D VAS rating of 52.14 ± 19.9 compared to reference scores of 0.891 (p < 0.001) and 68.6 ± 1.1 (p < 0.001). Mean scores of the ISR revealed the psychological symptom burden on the depression scale.

Conclusion: PJI patients still suffer from significantly lower quality of life compared to normative data, even years after surgically successful treatment. Future clinical studies should focus on patient-related outcome measures. Newly emerging treatment strategies, prevention methods, and interdisciplinary approaches should be implemented to improve the quality of life of PJI patients.

Keywords: periprosthetic joint infection; psychological outcomes; quality of life; revision arthroplasty.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mean physical health component score (PCS) and mean mental health component score (MCS) assessed with the SF-36. The results of the periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) cohort are shown in dark grey. For a comparison the values of the normative data are illustrated in light grey. * Significant difference.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Subdimension scores for patient-related quality of life assessed with the SF-36. The results of the PJI cohort are shown in dark grey. For a comparison, the values of the normative data are illustrated in light grey. * Significant difference.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Results of the EQ-5D subdimensions given in percentage.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Mean values of the ISR scores. The black dotted lines depict the border of considered symptom burden.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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