Translation and validation of the Dutch version of the Oxford 12-item knee questionnaire for knee arthroplasty

Background In 1998, the Oxford 12-item knee questionnaire was developed by Dawson et al. as a self-administered disease- and site-specific questionnaire, specifically developed for knee arthroplasty patients. Since then, it has proven to be an effective outcome questionnaire, and is widely used. Despite the positive psychometric properties for the Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) population, the 12-item knee questionnaire has only been translated into a few languages. We thus translated and validated the Oxford 12-item knee questionnaire for the Dutch population.

Methods and results After translation according to a forward/backward protocol, 174 knee arthroplasty patients were asked to answer the questionnaire together with an SF-36, an AKSS and a VAS. The reliability, validity, content validity and the sensitivity to change were all tested. Our Dutch version of the Oxford 12-item knee questionnaire achieved excellent scores in all of these properties.

Interpretation The Dutch Oxford 12-item knee questionnaire proved to be an excellent evaluation instrument for the Dutch orthopedic surgeon and can be used for all total knee arthroplasty patients.