Abstract

BACKGROUND: The Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) is one of the most common surgical intervention in patients with osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Previous studies suggested a significant improvement in health status after TKA surgery. But we have little data about Iranian population undergone TKA. In current clinical study we evaluated post-operatively health status using reliable tools of MOS SF-36 and WOMAC in OA and RA patients undergoing TKA. METHOD: In this cohort study, patients with OA and/or RA who were candidate for TKA surgery were included. Using two reliable questionnaires i.e. WOMAC and SF-36, quality of life of patients was examined during a period of six months (three monthly intervals) after the surgery. All data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics. Kolmogrov-Smirnov, Kendall's tau, chi-square test and K-related Non parametric tests were used. RESULT: Of the 2126 patients who underwent TKA, there were 2024 diagnosed osteoarthritis and 102 validated RA over one year. The mean ± SD of age and the average BMI were 68.0 ± 7.0 BMI 28.5 kg/m2, respectively. Regarding the comorbidities and concurrent disorders about 14 of cases were diabetic, 42 had cardiovascular diseases, 3 had respiratory diseases and 12 involved with gastrointestinal diseases. The result of SF-36 dramatically increased during follow up. The central distributions of all domains in SF-36 questionnaire indicated that most scores increased during the time after surgery. As a consequence, WOMAC and MOS FS-36 indicated statistically significant changes after TKA for those who are suffering from RA or OA. CONCLUSION: TKA is an effective surgical process which improves the quality of life in OA and/or RA. Also, WOMAC and SF-36 examining tools are likely reliable tools with similar results to assess patients' quality of life after TKA surgery.