title: Can the Oxford Scores be used to monitor symptomatic progression of patients awaiting knee or hip arthroplasty?
abstract: We report the week-to-week variation of the Oxford Knee and Oxford Hip Score (OKS, OHS) in individuals with severe osteoarthritis. People waitlisted for knee (n=51) or hip arthroplasty (n=52) were assessed twice, 1-week apart. There were no major week-to-week systematic biases in the scores. Limits of agreement (LOA) for both scores were wide (OKS, -9.5 to 6.6; OHS, -7.7 to 7). For most individual questions, the answers varied by ≤ 1 point in over 90% of participants. The week-to-week 95% LOA for the Oxford scores are unacceptably large, but variations within the individual questions are minimal. Consequently, reference to variation in the individual questions may be more useful for monitoring a patient's preoperative clinical change than changes in the total Oxford score. We conclude that the total scores are not suitable for monitoring the progression of OA in individual patients.
authors.affiliation: SWS Clinical School, The University of NSW; Whitlam Orthopaedic Research Centre, Liverpool Hospital.
authors.forename: Justine M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Naylor
authors.forename: Gihan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kamalasena
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hayen
authors.forename: Ian A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Sam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Adie
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D019644:Arthroplasty, Replacement, Hip; D019645:Arthroplasty, Replacement, Knee; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015207:Osteoarthritis, Hip / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000601:surgery; D020370:Osteoarthritis, Knee / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000601:surgery; D013997:Time Factors; D014850:Waiting Lists
keywords: Oxford hip score; Oxford knee score; arthroplasty; osteoarthritis; patient-reported outcome measures; psychometrics