Does preoperative education improve anxiety and surgical outcomes compared to usual care in patients undergoing hip or knee replacement?
It remains uncertain whether preoperative education offers benefits over usual care for reducing anxiety or improving surgical outcomes in hip or knee replacement.
Although preoperative education is embedded in the consent process, we are unsure if it offers benefits over usual care in terms of reducing anxiety, or in surgical outcomes, such as pain, function and adverse events. Preoperative education may represent a useful adjunct, with low risk of undesirable effects, particularly in certain patients, for example people with depression, anxiety or unrealistic expectations, who may respond well to preoperative education that is stratified according to their physical, psychological and social need.
McDonald et al. (Tue,) studied this question.