The General Well-Being, Physical Health, and Psychosocial Health of Young Adult Male Subjects following Knee Surgery

The purpose of this study was to assess the general well-being, physical health, and psychosocial health of male subjects with a recent history of knee surgery and compare their status to a control group of uninjured male subjects. The surgery group consisted of 20 male subjects who had recently undergone knee surgery. The control group consisted of 20 randomly selected male subjects who had no history of lower extremity injury or pain within the past six months. All subjects completed the Medical Outcome Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), which is a patient self-report measure that obtains an assessment of their general health status over the past four weeks in three different domains: general well-being, physical health, and psychosocial health. The results revealed that subjects in the surgery group had significant deficits in physical and psychosocial health when compared to the control group. General well-being, however, was not significantly affected in the surgery group when compared to the control group. We believe health care professionals should pay special attention to the physical and psychosocial health of patients in the early stages following knee surgery.