title: Morbidity index: A score to assess immediate postoperative recovery in TKR patients.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Every surgical procedure involves certain amount of postoperative morbidity which varies among different surgeries and the same surgery done by different techniques. Minimally invasive surgeries have evolved in all surgical branches and are believed to have a lesser morbidity than the traditional procedures; however there is no score or index to assess the immediate recovery after any surgical procedure in the literature. We tried to devise an immediate postoperative assessment method that takes into account the early recovery phase of patient post total knee arthroplasty (TKA) from day1 to day3. We called it as morbidity index. It consists of a 10 different parameters which could overall assess the patient's postoperative recovery.
  
  
  METHODS
  A prospective study was conducted in order to evaluate feasibility of the morbidity index and its usefulness in assessing the immediate postoperative recovery in TKA. We evaluated 50 consecutive TKA patients and scored at day 1, day 2 and day 3 postoperatively by a morbidity index.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean score on day one was 13.88 which decreased to 4.68 by day three indicating morbidity has decreased.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The morbidity index can be a tool to assess the immediate postoperative recovery of the patient after TKA and can be used to compare different approaches and procedure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopaedics, Bombay Hospital, Mumbai 400 026, India.
authors.forename: Nilen A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Shah
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopaedics, Bombay Hospital, Mumbai 400 026, India.
authors.forename: Hitendra G
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Patil
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopaedics, Bombay Hospital, Mumbai 400 026, India.
authors.forename: Vinod O
authors.initials: VO
authors.lastname: Vaishnav
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopaedics, Bombay Hospital, Mumbai 400 026, India.
authors.forename: Krunal M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Kathawadia
keywords: Morbidity; Recovery; Subvastus approach; TKR (total knee replacement)