Patient Judgement of Change with Elective Surgery Correlates with Patient Reported Outcomes and Quality of Life

Abstract

Obtaining pre-surgery PROM measures is not always feasible. The aim of this study was to examine if self-reports of change following elective surgery correlate with change scores from a validated PROM (15-item Quality of Recovery (QoR-15)). This cross-sectional study across 29 hospitals enrolled elective surgery patients. PROMs were collected one-week pre-surgery, as well as one- and four-weeks post-surgery via an electronic survey. We examined associations between patient “judgement of change” at one and four-weeks after surgery and the actual pre-to post-surgery PROM change scores. A total of 4177 surveys were received. The correlation between patient judgement of change, and the actual change score was moderately strong at one-week (n = 247, rs = 0.512, p p p < 0.001), indicating that change in quality of recovery was related to change in QOL. These findings support the use of a single “judgement of change” recall question post-surgery.

Keywords

• patient reported outcome measure (PROM)
• quality of life (QOL)
• quality of recovery (QOR)
• hospital
• implementation science
• hospital