Detecting the Effect Size of Weather Conditions on Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs).

Area of Science:

• Orthopaedic Surgery
• Personalized Medicine
• Health Outcomes Research

Background:

• Personalized treatment outcome prediction is crucial in modern orthopaedic surgery.
• Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are vital for evaluating patient-centered care.
• Understanding factors influencing PROMs is essential for accurate health outcome assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of meteorological and light conditions on PROMs scores.
• To determine if environmental factors indirectly affect health-related outcomes.
• To provide recommendations for optimizing PROMs data collection.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of PROMs data from 2326 hip and knee surgery patients.
• Application of nearest neighbour propensity score matching for group comparison.
• Statistical analysis using Student's t-test and Mann-Whitney U test.

Main Results:

• Weather conditions, particularly relative humidity, significantly affect PROMs scores.
• Environmental factors can indirectly influence health-related outcomes.
• Cohen's effect size indicated a notable impact of weather on patient-reported data.

Conclusions:

• Meteorological conditions may bias PROMs scores, potentially affecting health outcome predictions.
• Strategic timing of PROMs collection can mitigate bias and improve data reliability.
• Optimizing data collection balances cost-effectiveness with data integrity.