Are Patients' Expectations of Recovery After Hip and Knee Replacement Similar to Those of the Surgeons?

There are a number of nonoperative factors affecting both the functional outcome of hip and knee replacements and postoperative satisfaction. Some are difficult to modify such as marked, functional limitation, severe pain, low mental health score and other co-morbidities prior to arthroplasty. Surgeons are limited in their ability to effect change in these variables. Consequently, in attempting to identify scope for improving outcome and satisfaction, we have focused on whether patients undergoing hip and knee replacements have realistic expectations when it comes to the time it will take them to rehabilitate to certain defined levels of function and pain relief. A number of other studies have investigated the importance of patient expectation on surgical outcome. Instead, we focus on the discrepancy between surgeon and patient expectation for the time taken to reach defined landmarks in rehabilitation.