Depression and the Overall Burden of Painful Joints: An Examination among Individuals Undergoing Hip and Knee Replacement for Osteoarthritis

The majority of patients with hip or knee osteoarthritis (OA) report one or more symptomatic joints apart from the one targeted for surgical care. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the association between the burden of multiple symptomatic joints and self-reported depression in patients awaiting joint replacement for OA. Four hundred and seventy-five patients at a single centre were evaluated. Patients self-reported joints that were painful and/or symptomatic most days of the previous month on a homunculus, with nearly one-third of the sample reporting 6 or more painful joints. The prevalence of depression was 12.2% (58/475). When adjusted for age, sex, education level, hip or knee OA, body mass index, chronic condition count, and joint-specific WOMAC scores, each additional symptomatic joint was associated with a 19% increased odds (odds ratio: 1.19 (95% CI: 1.08, 1.31, P < 0.01)) of self-reported depression. Individuals reporting 6 or more painful joints had 2.5-fold or greater odds of depression when compared to those patients whose symptoms were limited to the surgical joint. A focus on the surgical joint alone is likely to miss a potentially important determinant of postsurgical patient-reported outcomes in patients undergoing hip or knee replacement.