No Uniform Recommendations For Return To Daily Life Activities Including Work And Sport After Knee Arthroplasty In The Netherlands

Introduction: Uniform and multidisciplinary recommendations
concerning the return to daily life activities including work and
sport after knee arthroplasty (KA) are essential for setting
realistic patient expectations. However, scientific evidence for
such recommendations is limited, and recommendations are
often only based on expert opinions of healthcare profes
sionals.
Materials and Methods: We aimed to summarize the current
recommendations regarding return to daily life activities,
including work and sport, provided by Dutch hospitals and clinics
to patients after KA. Recommendations of 43 Dutch hospitals and
clinics that perform KA’s were identified, representing the advice
that is provided to 70% of the total Dutch KA patients annually.
Recommendations were retrieved using their websites (n ¼ 8),
brochures (n ¼ 40) and content from mobile phone applications
(n ¼ 9). Two researchers independently summarized the recom
mendations.
Results: Recommendations for 24 activities were identified and
summarized. Recommendations varied greatly between hospitals
and clinics. For example, the recommendations for return to work
were mentioned by 18 (42%) out of the 43 hospitals and clinics and
varied from two weeks to four months. For return to heavy work,
the range was six to twelve months.
Conclusions: Recommendations for return to daily life activities
after KA are often missing and vary considerably between Dutch
hospitals and clinics. These findings imply the need for more uniform
recommendations for postoperative return to daily life activities
including work and sports.