BACKGROUND: Mental health characteristics such as negative mood, fear avoidance, unhelpful thoughts regarding pain, and low self-efficacy are associated with symptom intensity and capability among patients with hip and knee osteoarthritis (OA). Knowledge gaps remain regarding the conceptual and statistical overlap of these constructs and which of these are most strongly associated with capability in people with OA. Further study of these underlying factors can inform us which mental health assessments to prioritize and how to incorporate them into whole-person, psychologically informed care.
QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: (1) What are the distinct underlying factors that can be identified using statistical grouping of responses to a multidimensional mental health survey administered to patients with OA? (2) What are the associations between these distinct underlying factors and capability in knee OA (measured using the Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score, Joint Replacement [KOOS JR]) and hip OA (measured using Hip Disability and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score, Joint Replacement [HOOS JR]), accounting for sociodemographic and clinical factors?
METHODS: We performed a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of adult patients who were referred to our program with a primary complaint of hip or knee pain secondary to OA between October 2017 and December 2020. Of the 2006 patients in the database, 38% (760) were excluded because they did not have a diagnosis of primary osteoarthritis, and 23% (292 of 1246) were excluded owing to missing data, leaving 954 patients available for analysis. Seventy-three percent (697) were women, with a mean age of 61 ± 10 years; 65% (623) of patients were White, and 52% (498) were insured under a commercial plan or via their employer. We analyzed demographic data, patient-reported outcome measures, and a multidimensional mental health survey (the 10-item Optimal Screening for Prediction of Referral and Outcome-Yellow Flag [OSPRO-YF] assessment tool), which are routinely collected for all patients at their baseline new-patient visit. To answer our first question about identifying underlying mental health factors, we performed an exploratory factor analysis of the OSPRO-YF score estimates. This technique helped identify statistically distinct underlying factors for the entire cohort based on extracting the maximum common variance among the variables of the OSPRO-YF. The exploratory factor analysis established how strongly different mental health characteristics were intercorrelated. A scree plot technique was then applied to reduce these factor groupings (based on Eigenvalues above 1.0) into a set of distinct factors. Predicted factor scores of these latent variables were generated and were subsequently used as explanatory variables in the multivariable analysis that identified variables associated with HOOS JR and KOOS JR scores.
RESULTS: Two underlying mental health factors were identified using exploratory factor analysis and the scree plot; we labeled them "pain coping" and "mood." For patients with knee OA, after accounting for confounders, worse mood and worse pain coping were associated with greater levels of incapability (KOOS JR) in separate models but when analyzed in a combined model, pain coping (regression coefficient -4.3 [95% confidence interval -5.4 to -3.2], partial R 2 0.076; p < 0.001) had the strongest relationship, and mood was no longer associated. Similarly, for hip OA, pain coping (regression coefficient -5.4 [95% CI -7.8 to -3.1], partial R 2 0.10; p < 0.001) had the strongest relationship, and mood was no longer associated.
CONCLUSION: This study simplifies the multitude of mental health assessments into two underlying factors: cognition (pain coping) and feelings (mood). When considered together, the association between capability and pain coping was dominant, signaling the importance of a mental health assessment in orthopaedic care to go beyond focusing on unhelpful feelings and mood (assessment of depression and anxiety) alone to include measures of pain coping, such as the Pain Catastrophizing Scale or Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia, both of which have been used extensively in patients with musculoskeletal conditions.
LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level III, prognostic study.