An exploration of patients' expectation of and satisfaction with surgical outcome

The majority of studies of surgical outcome focus on measures of function and pain. Increasingly, however, the desire to include domains such as patients' satisfaction and expectations had led to the development of simple measures and their inclusion into clinical studies. The purpose of this study was to determine patients' pre-operative expectations of and post-operative satisfaction with the outcome of their spinal surgery.

As part of the FASTER randomised controlled trial, patients were asked pre-operatively to quantify their expected improvement in pain and health status at 6 weeks, 6 and 12 months following surgery using 100 mm visual analogue scales (VAS), and to indicate their confidence in achieving this result and also the importance of this recovery to them. Patients were then asked to rate their satisfaction with the improvement achieved at each post-operative review using 100 mm VAS.

Although differences between patients' expectation and achievement were minimal 6 weeks post-operatively, there was a clear discrepancy at 6 months and 1 year, with patient expectations far exceeding achievement. There were significant correlations between failure to achieve expectations and the importance patients attached to this recovery at each post-operative assessment, but not with their confidence in achieving this result. Satisfaction levels remained high despite expectations not being met, with discectomy patients being more satisfied than decompression patients.

Patients' pre-operative expectations of surgical outcome exceed their long-term achievement. The more importance the patient attached to a good outcome, the larger is the discrepancy between expectation and achievement. Despite this, satisfaction levels remained high. The impact of unrealistic expectations on outcome remains unclear.