Purpose: There is no consensus regarding how best to measure postoperative quality of recovery after anesthesia/surgery (e.g., using 24-hour survey instruments) in veterans or active military. Our goals were to (1) describe health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) and recovery across time in veterans, (2) examine the commonality between the quality of recovery (QoR-15) and short-form (SF) surveys (including the SF-8, 24-hour version), and (3) examine the responsiveness of these surveys.
Materials and methods: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards from the University of Pittsburgh, the VA Pittsburgh, and the Human Research Protection Office of the Department of Defense. Secondary analyses of data were executed based on a randomized trial dataset of knee/hip arthroplasty patients, the study having recruited 135 total veterans. QoR-15 and HRQoL SF surveys were completed and self-reported before surgery (pre-op), on postoperative day 2 (PO-D2), and 6 weeks postoperatively. Descriptive statistics were used to examine scores across time. Common content was examined using Pearson's r. Responsiveness was examined using distribution-based methods.
Results: Average veteran age was 67 year, 89% were male, 88% white, and average body mass index was 33 kg∙m-2. QoR-15 scores declined from pre-op to PO-D2 but were higher than pre-op at 6 weeks. SF physical component summary (PCS) scores were low both pre-op and PO-D2, but were elevated over baseline at 6 weeks. SF mental component summary (MCS) scores declined from baseline to PO-D2 but were higher than pre-op at 6 weeks. Associations of the QoR-15 total score and PCS/MCS were medium/large and statistically significant at P ≤ .01. Both instruments were responsive to changes.
Conclusion: QoR-15 and SF-8 have high content commonality and performed similarly in veterans across time. SF-8 has added benefits of (1) brevity, (2) assessment of physical and mental health components, and (3) being normed to the general population. The SF-8, if used without the QoR-15 in tandem in future study of anesthesia-related outcomes, would need to be supplemented by separate questions addressing postoperative nausea/vomiting (a frequent outcome after anesthesia that is relevant to same-day and next-day mobilization after elective joint replacement surgery).
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02891798.
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2023. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.