QUALITY OF LIFE AFTER TOTAL HIPARTHROPLASTY – THE EFFECT OF CO-MORBIDITY AND COMPLICATIONS

Background and Aim: SF-36 has been used frequently as a measurement tool to evaluate the effect of total hip arthroplasty (THA) operation on the patient’s quality of life (QoL). There is though a lack of data describing how QoL is affected if the patients have medical co-morbidities before the operation or if they suffer postoperative complications after THA. With this study we wanted to describe the effect on QoL of pre-operative co-morbidity and post-operative surgical and thromboembolic complications after THA.Material and methods: This study was part of the ESMOS study where 500 consecutive THA patients (both primary and revision THA) were followed prospectively for one year, with the purpose to collect all surgical and thromboembolic events that these patients experienced. The patients were asked to fill in a SF-36 form the day before the operation and one year after the operation. 397 (79.4%) of the patients had two forms sufficient for further data analysis in this study. Co-morbidity data was meas...