Young or Old Age and Non-White Race Are Associated With Poor Patient-Reported Outcome Measure Response Compliance After Orthopaedic Surgery

PURPOSE: To investigate orthopaedic patient compliance with patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and identify factors that improve response rates. METHODS: Our search strategy comprised a combination of key words and database-specific subject headings for the concepts of orthopaedic surgical procedures, compliance, and PROMs from several research databases from inception to October 11, 2022. Duplicates were removed. A total of 97 studies were included. A table was created for the remaining articles to be appraised and analyzed. The collected data included study characteristics, follow-up/compliance rate, factors that increase/decrease compliance, and type of PROM. Follow-up/compliance rate was determined to be any reported response rate. The range and average used for analysis was based on the highest or lowest number reported in the specific article. RESULTS: The range of compliance reported was 11.3% to 100%. The overall response rate was 68.6%. The average baseline (preoperative/previsit) response rate was 76.6%. Most studies (77%) had greater than 50% compliance. Intervention/reminder of any type (most commonly phone call or mail) resulted in improved compliance from 44.6% to 70.6%. Young and elderly non-White male patients had the lowest compliance rate. When directly compared, phone call (71.5%) resulted in a greater compliance rate than electronic-based (53.2%) or paper-based (57.6%) surveys. CONCLUSIONS: The response rates for PROMs vary across the orthopaedic literature. Patient-specific factors, such as age (young or old) and race (non-White), may contribute to poor PROM response rate. Reminders and interventions significantly improve PROM response rates. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: PROMs are important tools in many aspects of medicine. The data generated from these tools not only provide information about individual patient outcomes but also make hypothesis-driven comparisons possible. Understanding the factors that affect patient compliance with PROMs is vital to our accurate understanding of patient outcomes and the overall advancement of medical care.