OPUS PhD student, Michelle Tew has been busy the past few months spruiking her research findings everywhere from Melbourne to Oxford! Most notably, Michelle participated in a conference that specifically focused on diabetes simulation modelling which ties in with Stream 5 of the OPUS research pillars. Read on for her wrap up on her findings:
9th Mount Hood Challenge – Dusseldorf, Germany
Michelle Tew, an OPUS PhD candidate recently presented her work on “Health-reported quality-of-life following total knee replacement by diabetes status” at the Mount Hood Diabetes Challenge conference held in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Health-reported quality of life (QoL) is increasingly used as a measure of health outcomes useful for health economic evaluations and to assist clinicians in the evaluation of their patients. Studies have shown that patient’s QoL is an important predictor of outcomes such as mortality and morbidity.
Diabetes has been associated with poorer surgical outcomes following total knee replacement (TKR), including increased complications, early revision and higher costs. The aim of the study was to determine long-term QoL patterns of patients following TKR according to diabetes status and gender. From her analysis, she found that although QoL improved following TKR, patients with diabetes exhibit significantly poorer QoL compared to patients without diabetes. Females with diabetes were identified to report the poorest QoL. There are potential important disparities in outcomes between patients following TKR and this work highlights the potential for patient reported outcome measures (PROMS) to be useful in clinical practice.