Effects of Ankle Arthrodesis vs Total Ankle Arthroplasty on Patient’s Shoe-Wear: What Fits Better?

Abstract

Category: Ankle Arthritis; Ankle Introduction/Purpose: Currently there are two major surgical options for the treatment of end-stage ankle arthritis (ESAA), namely total ankle arthroplasty (TAA) and ankle arthrodesis (AA). Many patients inquire about what shoes they can expect to wear after surgery. Shoes should fit to the patient’s feet, help shielding pathological joints, be comfortable, but also fashionable, as they are part of personal style and fashion. The impact ESAA surgery has on choice of shoes and consecutively on quality of life, has not been studied. Potentially maintenance of ankle range of motion and improved gait mechanics with TAA could also improve the ability to comfortably wear different styles of shoes. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of either AA and TAA on shoe-wear. Methods: This study is a retrospective analysis of a cohort of ESAA patients surgically treated with AA or TAA from the COFAS (Canadian Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society) database. Patient’s shoe wear comfort was obtained from the Musculoskeletal Outcomes Data Evaluation and Management Scale questionnaire, completed pre-operatively and post-operatively two and five years following surgery. The relationship between ankle-related quality of life and shoe-wear comfort, adjusting for patient factors was evaluated. A linear regression model adjusted for age, gender, BMI, smoking status, presence of inflammatory arthritis and baseline score was calculated. Additionally, differences within each pre-operative COFAS grades were analyzed. Results: 104 patients after AA and 106 following TAR have been included. The mean pre-operative baseline score did not differ between the cohorts (39.36 for AA and 38.94 for TAA, respectively; p= 0.74). Comparing AA patients with TAA patient scores over a 5-year period, there was no difference in shoe-wear comfort after 2 years, but after 5 years scores significantly improved for TAA patients (p= 0.02). Subgroup analysis showed that COFAS 4 patients improved the most with significant changes already after 2 years (mean difference 5.4, p=0.05), which further improved after 5 years of follow-up (mean difference 10.7, p=0.001). Conclusion: This study is the first study to elucidate patient experience after ankle arthrodesis and total ankle arthroplasty with regards to their shoe-wear. Patients undergoing TAR have better shoe-wear scores by five years post-operatively than those undergoing AA. Especially patients with a COFAS 4 grade, which represents a patient population with adjacent joint arthritis, show significant improvement already 2 years after surgery. This data is useful when counselling patients preoperatively, and further provides support for TAA over AA after appropriate patient selection.