Measuring Decisional Regret in Orthopedic Surgery: Tools, Time Points, and Score Interpretation.

Area of Science:

• Orthopedic surgery outcomes
• Patient-reported outcomes (PROs)
• Shared decision-making

Background:

• Growing emphasis on shared decision-making in surgery.
• Decisional regret is a crucial patient-reported outcome (PRO) for evaluating surgical success.
• Identifying reliable tools to measure decisional regret is increasingly important.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and analyze tools used for measuring decisional regret in elective orthopedic surgery.
• To examine the postoperative time frames for assessing decisional regret.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature review of PubMed/MEDLINE and Embase databases.
• Inclusion criteria: studies on decisional regret in elective orthopedic surgery.
• Data extraction on measurement tools and postoperative assessment timing.

Main Results:

• The Decisional Regret Scale (DRS) was the most frequently used tool (54%).
• Other tools included study-specific questions (19%), SRS-22 (15%), and patient interviews (11%).
• Postoperative assessment timing varied, with 6 months (26%) and 12 months (22%) being most common.

Conclusions:

• The DRS is the most validated and widely adopted tool for quantifying decisional regret in orthopedic surgery.
• Standardizing regret assessment at 6 or 12 months postoperatively is suggested.
• Clinical stratification of regret scores can improve meta-analysis and risk factor identification for enhanced patient care.