Surgeon satisfaction agreement after total knee arthroplasty using a visual analogue scale: a single surgeon series

Introduction

The outcome of total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is traditionally rated by objective criteria such as the knee society clinical rating system (KSCRS). Subjective criteria, such as satisfaction, will be of more importance, because health-care is shifting towards a market model. The aim of this study was to investigate the agreement on satisfaction after TKA between two orthopaedics surgeons, when one of the surgeons reviews his own results.

Patients and methods

We investigated a group of 57 patients (63 TKAs) using a visual analogue scale (VAS) for satisfaction. There were 53 TKAs available and were separately seen by the two orthopaedic surgeons for clinical follow-up.

Results

After we split the satisfaction rate as excellent–good and fair–poor (VAS smaller or equal to 20 was excellent–good), we found a substantial agreement (κ = 0.77) between the orthopaedic surgeons. However, we found that the surgeon who viewed his own results (B) scored a significantly lower satisfaction than surgeon A when analysing the complete group.

Conclusions

The interobserver agreement of satisfaction, using a VAS, was high between the two orthopaedic surgeons. The satisfaction VAS is a simple tool to quantify satisfaction of surgeons and patients after TKA and could be used to evaluate quality. Comparison between studies could be more efficient and reliable using the satisfaction VAS method.