JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The incidence rate of total joint replacement (TJR) continues to increase due to aging population and the surgery that is very successful in providing pain relief and improved function among patients with advanced knee or hip arthritis. Improving patient outcomes and patient satisfaction after TJR remains an important goal. Wearable technologies provide a novel way to capture patient function and activity data and supplement clinical and patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures to better understand patient outcomes after TJR.

Objective:

We examined the current literature to evaluate the potential role for wearable devices to compare with existing methods for monitoring and improving patient rehabilitation and outcomes following TJR.

Methods:

We performed a literature search to identify articles discussing the use of wearable devices in measuring and affecting outcomes of post-operative TJR patients. Selected papers were organized into a spreadsheet and categorized for analysis based on related outcome measures discussed.

Results:

Nine papers were selected. The literature showed generally the feasibility of wearable devices on capturing post-operative activity data and improving outcomes. Wearable-collected data were able to predict post-operative clinical measures, such as range of motion (ROM) and timed-up-and-go (TUG). When predicting PROs, specifically HOOS/KOOS and VR-12, strong associations were found between changes in sensor-collected data and in PROs over time. A wearable that provided feedback to patients significantly improved step count over time in comparison to patients not receiving feedback.

Conclusions:

These findings suggest that wearable technology has potential to remotely measure and improve post-operative orthopedic patient outcomes. We anticipate that this review will facilitate further investigation of wearable devices as viable tools for guiding clinical management of TJR rehabilitation.