Psychiatric Disorders Are Predictive of Worse Pain Severity and Functional Outcomes After Fasciotomy for Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome of the Leg.

Objective: To determine whether concomitant psychiatric diagnoses and medication use were associated with postfasciotomy outcomes in patients with chronic exertional compartment syndrome (CECS).

Design: Retrospective comparative cohort study.

Setting: Single academic medical center from 2010 to 2020.

Patients: All patients above 18 years old who underwent fasciotomy for CECS.

Assessment Of Risk Factors/independent Variables: Psychiatric history was recorded from electronic health records including disease diagnosis and medications.

Main Outcome Measures: The 3 main outcome measures were postoperative pain using the Visual Analog Scale, functional outcomes using the Tegner Activity Scale, and return to sport.

Results: Eighty one subjects (legs), 54% male, with an average age of 30 years and follow-up of 52 months were included. 24 subjects (30%) had at least one psychiatric diagnosis at the time of surgery. Regression analysis found psychiatric history to be an independent predictor of worse postoperative pain severity and postoperative Tegner scores (P < 0.05). Furthermore, subjects with psychiatric disorders not on medication had worse pain severity (P < 0.001) and Tegner scores (P < 0.01) versus controls, whereas subjects with a psychiatric disorder on medication had better pain severity (P < 0.05) versus controls.

Conclusions: History of psychiatric disorder was predictive of worse postoperative pain and activity outcomes after fasciotomy for CECS. Use of psychiatric medication was associated with improvement in pain severity in some domains.