Summary

This is the latest publication of provisional post-operatives scores from the Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) programme for the period April 2010 to March 2011. This publication considers the change in patients' self-reported health status for the four common elective surgical procedures in the PROMs programme: groin hernia surgery, hip replacement, knee replacement and varicose vein surgery.

Analysis covers the period from April 2010 to the end of March 2011 and includes pre-operative questionnaires that all English providers treating NHS patients have been asked to collect from patients who wish to participate and post-operative questionnaires returned by patients following their surgery. Not all patients undergoing the relevant operations returned questionnaires for a variety of reasons.

Key facts

In the period from April 2010 to March 2011:

• There were 245,512 eligible¹ hospital episodes and 171,347 pre-operative questionnaires returned - a headline participation rate of 69.8%, which is an increase of 3.7 percentage points compared to 2009-10.
• Of the 162,370 post-operative questionnaires sent out, 131,379 have been returned - a return rate of 80.9%²,³.
• 95.8% of hip replacement respondents and 91.4% of knee replacement respondents recorded joint related improvements following their operation as measured by their response to a series of questions about their condition (Oxford Hip and Knee Scores). These values were 95.7% and 91.4% respectively in the finalised data for 2009-10.
• 82.5% of varicose vein respondents recorded varicose vein related improvements following their operation as measured by their response to a series of questions about their condition (Aberdeen Varicose Vein Questionnaire score). This value was 83.4% in the finalised data for 2009-10.
• 86.7% of hip replacement respondents and 77.9% of knee replacement respondents recorded an increase in their general health following their operation, based on a combination of five key criteria concerning their general health (EQ-5D Index score), compared to 51.6% for varicose veins and 50.5% for groin hernias. These values were 87.2%, 77.6%, 52.4% and 49.3% respectively in the finalised data for 2009-10.
• 61.4% of hip replacement respondents and 50.8 % of knee replacement recorded an increase in their EQ-VAS score (current state of the patients general health marked on a visual analogue scale) compared to 39.8% for varicose veins and 39.1% for groin hernias. These values were 61.4%, 50.2%, 40.4% and 38.2% respectively in the finalised data for 2009-10.

Footnotes

1. An 'eligible episode' is an episode in HES in the period in question, clinically coded with relevant hip, knee, varicose vein or groin hernia OPCS procedure codes which make it suitable for inclusion into PROMs.
2. Not every pre-operative questionnaire will have a post-operative questionnaire sent out. This may be for a number of reasons including the cancellation of an operation or the death of the patient.
3. This will be an underestimate of the eventual rate due to the time delay in returning the post-operative questionnaire.