Background

In the current cost-constrained health economy, justification of surgical intervention is increasingly sought. As a validated disease-specific outcome measure, the pre-operative Oxford Knee Score (OKS) has been suggested as a possible threshold measurement in knee arthroplasty. However, contrary to expectations, analysis of pre-operative OKS in the joint registry population demonstrates a normal distribution curve with a sub-group of high-scoring patients. This suggests that either the baseline OKS does not accurately define surgical threshold, or that patients with a high OKS are inappropriately having knee replacements.