Symptom duration predicts inferior mid-term outcomes following hip arthroscopy.

Introduction: Studies have demonstrated a negative relationship between the length of time with symptoms and patient-reported outcome measures in primary hip arthroscopy. Our aim was to expand the generalizability of this finding with a multi-center cohort.

Methods: A multi-center hip arthroscopy registry was queried for patients undergoing primary hip arthroscopy from 2014 to 2017. Patients were stratified according to whether pre-operative symptom duration exceeded two years or did not exceed two years. A Wilcoxon rank sum test was performed for differences in two year post-operative outcome scores. Logistic regression models analyzed the influence of symptom duration on achieving clinically meaningful thresholds (minimum clinically important difference, patient-acceptable symptom state, substantial clinical benefit) when controlling for baseline scores, age, BMI, and sex.

Results: Seven hundred forty-four patients met the inclusion criteria, from which 620 had complete outcomes information. The mean ± SD 2-year iHOT-12 scores of patients with symptom duration greater than two years (69 ± 26) were significantly lower than patients with symptom duration less than two years (77 ± 23) (Dunn test, p < 0.001). Chronic duration of pain was a negative predictor of achieving iHOT-12 MCID (0.47 [0.31-0.72]), PASS (0.53 [0.37-0.76]), and SCB (0.67 [0.47-0.94]).

Conclusion: When controlling for differences in baseline demographic factors and pre-operative iHOT-12 scores, patients with chronic pain report poorer functional outcomes at mid-term follow-up. These results suggest that chronic pain predicts inferior outcomes from primary hip arthroscopy and that surgical intervention at earlier time points may be beneficial in achieving better outcomes.