Patient and doctor expectations from surgery 'do not always match'
Published on 11 Mar 2010
Patients' expectations from joint replacement operations
do not always match those of their doctors, a new study has
found.
It is important that patients have
realistic expectations, as they could otherwise become disheartened
when the outcome of their surgery is not as impressive as they had
hoped.
Yet a study by researchers at Hospital for
Special Surgery (HSS) in New York found that many doctors fail to
make their patients understand the likely outcome of their
operation.
"If a patient has unrealistic
expectations that are not properly trimmed preoperatively or
achieved after surgery, the patient will most likely be
dissatisfied with some aspects of the final result,"
explained Dr Alejandro Gonzalez Della Valle, an associate attending
orthopaedic surgeon at HSS.
"Conversely,
if the patient has low expectations for function after surgery, it
is likely that he or she will not enthusiastically engage in the
different phases of the postoperative recovery including physical
therapy."
Presenting their findings at
the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting, the
researchers revealed that they compared the expectations of 42
patients with their doctors.
They found that the
expectations of patients differed from their surgeons in 68 per
cent of cases, with 53 per cent of patients anticipating a better
outcome than their surgeon.
Dr Gonzalez Della
Valle said that patients should be given a class by a specialised
nurse prior to their operation to ensure they understand what to
expect from their treatment.
This kind of
intervention "can be used to better align the patient's
and the surgeon's expectations prior to surgery", he
added.
A spokesman for Arthritis Research UK said
patients' expectations of retaining mobility and a good quality of
life into old age were increasing. This included having high
expectations of the outcome of joint replacement surgery in
relieving pain and improved function.
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