does consulting an occupational medicine specialist decrease time to return to work among total knee arthroplasty patients? A 12-month prospective multicenter cohort study

Purpose: Worldwide there is a steep rising demand for total knee arthroplasty (TKA), especially among patients of working age. Return to work (RTW) rates among these TKA patients vary between 40 and 98% with a mean time to return to work between 8 and 17 weeks. These findings are in contrast with orthopaedic guidelines advising RTW within 3 months, starting gradually if needed. Moreover patients who receive TKA have the greatest productivity and income loss when compared to other types of common surgery. To decrease time to RTW among these TKA patients, attention should be paid to the beneficial and hindering factors for RTW within health care as well as occupational health. The occupational health experts in the Netherlands are the Occupational Medicine Specialists (OMS) who are physicians with four years post-graduate training in Occupational Medicine. The aim of this study is to investigate whether total knee arthroplasty (TKA) patients who consulted an occupational medicine specialist (OMS) within 3 months after surgery, return to work (RTW) earlier than patients who did not consult an OMS.