THURSDAY, Feb. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Outcomes obtained from hip replacement patient health questionnaires are the same, whether completed on paper, touch screen, or online, according to a study published in the Feb. 2 issue of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery.
Nina Shervin, M.D., of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues investigated whether outcomes of computer-based questionnaires differed from those derived from paper-based formats in a group of total hip replacement patients. Five health status questionnaires (the Harris hip score; Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index; Short Form-36; EuroQol-5D; and University of California at Los Angeles activity score) were administered to 61 patients in three formats: paper, touchscreen, and Web-based. The results obtained from the different modes were compared, with a study design of 90 percent power for detecting 10 percent differences between the three modes.
The researchers found no significant differences for any of the five questionnaires among the paper, touch-screen, and Web-based modes. The results were highly correlated among all modes, across all the patients, and in the preoperative and postoperative subgroups.
"Conversion to the electronic formats of these questionnaires will allow for a less cumbersome and time-intensive process for the administration of each questionnaire, more efficient data retrieval and analysis, and greater protection against loss of data. Furthermore, this conversion may increase the utility of these important outcome measures among more surgeons," the authors write.
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