Challenging the Status Quo: Debunking the Necessity of 5-Year to 10-Year Patient-Reported Outcome Measures in Total Hip and Knee Arthroplasties

Background: In the current shift toward value-based healthcare, patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have become essential to assess the effectiveness of medical interventions. However, elucidation of the optimal timeframe for PROMs evaluation remains crucial. This study aimed to (1) determine the proportion of patients who experienced clinically meaningful improvements in PROMs scores at each follow-up visit after total hip arthroplasty (THA) and total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and (2) calculate and apply the clinical relevance ratio (CRR) for these long-term PROM collections postoperatively.

Methods: A total of 12 independent studies reporting THA (n = 8 studies) and TKA (n = 4 studies) postoperative PROM data with up to 10 years of follow-up in Europe or the United States were aggregated. A distribution-based minimal clinically important difference threshold and CRR were used to determine which patients had clinically meaningful improvements in PROMs at 1, 5, and 10 years.

Results: The proportion of patients who had clinically meaningful improvements in PROM scores stabilized after 1 year following both THA and TKA. Overall, the CRR decreased over time for all PROMs, with the CRR beginning to decrease at 1-year follow-up, bringing into question the robustness and clinical relevance of long-term PROMs data.

Conclusions: The present study challenges the utility of requiring PROMs with a minimum follow-up of 2 years for THA and TKA. Research efforts should be focused on registries evaluating implant survivorship at longer-term follow-up, while PROMs should be better assessed up to 1-year follow-up. Reconsidering the long-term PROMs assessment would lead to more efficient and cost-effective research in orthopedic outcomes, without compromising data quality.