[Effect of patient age on use of the knee joint score]

Clinical studies are done with the help of scores though different factors of influence lower comparability. The underlying study examines the influence of patient age as this always presents a certain span.

96 degree I damaged knee joints were examined by 3 examiners using the Larson-, Lysholm-, Marshall-, HSS- and OAK-score. Furthermore ratings by a VAS and the Tegner activity score were done. With the Friedman test, the rank correlation coefficient by Spearman and the contingency chart by Bowker it was tested if the examiners and the scores rate equally. To find out the influence of the age three age groups were made up.

The examiners judged significantly different excluding the Marshall and the OAK scores. In between two examiners no significant difference could be found between the young and the middle-aged patient group. Between two other examiners no significant difference was found only for the Lysholm and the HSS score in the young group and only for the Lysholm score in the middle-aged group. In the group of the senior patients no significant difference for the scores by Lysholm, Marshall and OAK were found. In the comparison of the second examiner pair no significant differences could be proven by the scores by Larson, the OAK and the HSS. All other comparisons were significantly different. In the comparison of all five scores significant differences were seen between the Larson score and the HSS and the Lysholm and the HSS. The Lysholm score proved to be the strictest, the HSS to be the leanest.

Especially for the senior patients in dependency of the examiner and the chosen score significant differences were found concluding that the relevance of results lessens for future times as the score results drop with patient age anyway. The age span in one study should have a maximum of 10-20 years to reduce the influence of age on the final result.