Published online Feb 18, 2024. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v15.i2.156
Peer-review started: October 4, 2023
First decision: December 12, 2023
Revised: December 20, 2023
Accepted: January 8, 2024
Article in press: January 8, 2024
Published online: February 18, 2024
Processing time: 125 Days and 18.3 Hours
The minimal clinically important difference (MCID) is defined as the smallest meaningful change in a health domain that a patient would identify as important. Thus, an improvement that exceeds the MCID can be used to define a successful treatment for the individual patient.
To quantify the rate of clinical improvement following anatomical total shoulder arthroplasty for glenohumeral osteoarthritis.
Patients were treated with the Global Unite total shoulder platform arthroplasty between March 2017 and February 2019 at Herlev and Gentofte Hospital, Denmark. The patients were evaluated preoperatively and 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and 24 months postoperatively using the Western Ontario Osteoarthritis of the Shoulder index (WOOS), Oxford Shoulder Score (OSS) and Constant-Murley Score (CMS). The rate of clinically relevant improvement was defined as the proportion of patients who had an improvement 24 months postoperatively that exceeded the MCID. Based on previous literature, MCID for WOOS, OSS, and CMS were defined as 12.3, 4.3, and 12.8 respectively.
Forty-nine patients with a Global Unite total shoulder platform arthroplasty were included for the final analysis. Mean age at the time of surgery was 66 years (range 49.0-79.0, SD: 8.3) and 65% were women. One patient was revised within the two years follow-up. The mean improvement from the preoperative assess
Based on three shoulder-specific outcome measures we find that approximately 90% of patients has a clinically relevant improvement. This is a clear message when informing patients about their prognosis.
Core Tip: In this study, we present a new approach for analyzing and interpreting improvement in patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) scores by linking the improvement in PROM scores to the minimal clinical difference for each patient. We found that approximately 90% of patients treated with an anatomical total shoulder arthroplasty for glenohumeral osteoarthritis had a clinically relevant improvement two years postoperatively.