The Impact of Mental Health on Patient Outcomes After Total Knee and Hip Arthroplasty

Mental health plays a key role in how we perceive and interact with the world around us. It affects a person ’s outlook on life, how they address challenges, and how they respond to the good and bad that occur in daily life. Mental health and successful total joint arthroplasty are intimately connected. A patient who has normal mental health is more likely to use fewer narcotics, have greater improvement s in clinical outcomes early in the post-operative period, and maintain those outcomes as time goes on.[1,2] There is growing interest in patient mental health and their perceptions after total joint arthroplasty.[3–6] Depression and anxiety are common mental disorders with a worldwide prevalence of 4.4 and 3.6%, respectively, though they are slightly higher in the United States at 5.9 and 6.3%, respectively.[6] The prevalence of both of these psychiatric conditions in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty exceeds 20% and is increasing each year.[6] This high prevalence would suggest t hat end-stage knee osteoarthritis creates not just a physical, but also a mental burden.
Source: The Journal of Arthroplasty - Category: Orthopaedics Authors: Tags: Editorial Source Type: research