BACKGROUND: Mental health status has been shown to influence functional outcome in a number of orthopaedic disorders. The purpose of this retrospective cohort study was to assess whether a diminished baseline Mental Component Summary (MCS) score on the Short Form-36 (SF-36) is predictive of less improvement in the Ankle Osteoarthritis Scale (AOS) score at the time of midterm follow-up after arthroplasty or arthrodesis for end-stage ankle arthritis.
METHODS: Preoperative and postoperative patient scores on the SF-36 MCS and AOS questionnaires were obtained from the Canadian Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (COFAS) End-Stage Ankle Arthritis Database. The relationship between the preoperative MCS score and the change in the total AOS score at the time of final follow-up was summarized with use of a Pearson correlation coefficient (r).
