This survey asks the following questions of the patient in terms of their satisfaction with the outcome of their treatment. It is worth asking the patient some basic questions such as these in addition to their subjective and objective scores since their satisfaction doesn’t always correlate to some of the other outcomes. It is not rare to find a patient with an average score based on pain and function to be very happy with their outcomes. Conversely you can find patients with excellent scores who are not satisfied, presumably due to unrealistic expectations.
The questions are:
How well did the surgery…
- relieve the pain
- increase your ability to perform regular activities
- allow you to perform heavy work or sport activities (if allowed by your Dr)
- meet your expectations
- Would you have the operation again if needed on another joint?
In 2011 we added the VAS 0-100 to capture additional details about the degree of pain the patient is currently experiencing, how normal the affected joint feels, and how satisfied they are with their medical care. Pre-operatively only these 3 questions are asked.
