The critical importance of recognition, evaluation, and management of mental health on outcomes following hip arthroscopy – A synthetic narrative review: Current concepts

Mental health and wellness influence patients with hip pain and dysfunction secondary to Femoroacetabular Impingement Syndrome, acetabular dysplasia, and labral injury. Disorders of mental wellness may impact hip preservation surgery patients both before and after surgery. Major depression and generalized anxiety are the two most common diagnoses that affect hip preservation surgery patients. There are dozens of unique questionnaires that can subjectively and objectively characterize the mental health of patients with hip pain. Pain threshold and pain tolerance are two issues that must be recognized to optimally predict treatment outcome in an informed consent shared decision-making discussion. Patient expectations may also significantly influence preoperative symptoms and postoperative outcome. Pain threshold, pain tolerance, and patient expectations are entities traditionally viewed as qualitative and unmeasurable. However, many valid and reliable methods exist to quantitatively assess these patient-specific variables. Recent original research and synthetic review publications have consistently concluded similar findings: patients with disorders of mental wellness generally have lower preoperative patient-reported outcome scores, do improve following surgery, albeit to a lesser magnitude than non-mental disorder patients, and ultimately have lower postoperative scores at their final follow. As with most orthopaedic surgery literature, the investigation of mental health and hip preservation is primarily via retrospective level four evidence with small numbers of patients from a single centre and single surgeon at short-term follow-up. Although hip preservation surgeons are orthopaedic surgeons by training and practice, they must be able to recognize mental wellness disorders and either treat or refer when suspected or identified.