Knee Pain, Quality of Life and Arthroplasty: Analysis of Baseline Data - the Osteoarthritis-Initiative (OAI) Study

AIM: Assess pain and quality-of-life (QoL) of knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients with/without knee-arthroplasty (KA).

METHOD: We assessed baseline questionnaire data of participants in the longitudinal OAI study (1085 with and 3706 without history-of KA (H/o-KA) in left-right/either-both knees). We analyzed factors associated with H/o-KA such as pain, QoL, age, BMI, sex, race and family history using Chi-square tests, t-tests and ANOVA and binary unconditional logistic regression in SASŪv9.2.

RESULTS: Preliminary results show that those with H/o-KA were more likely to have symptoms (OR=2.5, 95%CI:2.6-2.9), pain (OR:1.7, CI:1.4-1.9) and limited activities compared to those without H/o-KA. 70% of participants with H/o-KA reported limitations to activities compared to 57% without H/o-KA (p<0.001). Though those without H/o-KA reported better QoL and pain profile compared to those with H/o-KA, the number of workdays missed did not differ significantly between them. Those without H/o-KA had lower WOMAC disability score and greater KOOS QoL score (P<0.001) than those with H/o-KA. KOOS-QoL scores were better for men compared to women (P<0.001) and whites compared to blacks (P<0.001) regardless of H/o-KA. BMI was significantly greater for those with H/o-KA compared to those without H/o-KA (P<0.0021).

CONCLUSIONS: Overall most participants reported OA-related functional limitations. Although more participants with H/o-KA had symptoms, and poorer QoL (associated with sex, race, BMI), these did not result in any greater missed workdays. Follow-up studies should account for this baseline differences. Better understanding of OA risk factors and knee pain relationship will help to describe subsets of OA, KA and other OA/KA-associated chronic pain conditions.