Kaleb Michaud, Ph.D., has for a long time listened to patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) talking about improved quality of life after their total joint replacements. But until now, there’s been little information that actually measures how the surgery impacts quality of life for RA patients. Much more information is known about the outcomes in osteoarthritis (OA) patients with the same surgery, even though RA is the most common inflammatory arthritis indicated for surgery.
Using the largest arthritis patient-report study in the U.S. – the National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases – Dr. Michaud and his collaborators expanded the number of measurements collected from patients and studied responses of 834 RA patients and 315 OA patients who had their first total knee replacement surgery between 1999 and 2012.
While the numbers aren’t huge, researchers now have a lot more data on patient-recorded outcomes and quality of life than any other previous source. Dr. Michaud said based on analysis, total knee replacement can improve the quality of life in RA patients, however, ultimately the arthritis usually returns.
Dr. Michaud’s collaborators are: Anand Dusad, M.D., Ted Mikuls, M.D., James O’Dell, M.D., Omaha – VA Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System and UNMC; Sofia Pedro, M.Sc., National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases, Wichita, Kan; Curtis Hartman, M.D., and Kevin Garvin, M.D., UNMC.