Mylène Jansen

96 Chapter 5 months preoperatively (Figure 5b). The largest postoperative improvements were reported for taking the stairs (-38%), clambering (-32%) and kneeling (-29%) (Figure 5b). Figure 5 : Reported difficulty with 13 work-related activities for the knee joint distraction group (A) and high tibial osteotomy group (B) at 3 time points. The percentage of patients that experienced severe difficulty is depicted for each task. Discussion The present survey among patients who previously participated in an RCT comparing KJD with HTO showed similar sport- and work-related outcomes for both groups. The RTS rate was 79% in the KJD group, compared to 80% in the HTO group. The RTW rate was 94% in the KJD group compared to 97% in the HTO group. Overall, 7 out of 10 patients returned to sports within 6 months and 9 out of 10 patients returned to work within 6 months. Time to RTS and RTW did not differ between both groups. The improvement in mean WORQ score from pre- to postoperative was slightly higher in the HTO group. Thus, our initial findings, the first RTS/RTW data in KJD patients, may support the hypothesis that KJD might result in comparable postoperative sport- and work participation, compared to HTO, although larger cohorts are clearly warranted to verify this hypothesis. No data exist on RTS after KJD, but the present RTS rates of 79% after KJD and 80% after HTO are in line with the RTS rate of 85% after HTO that was found in a meta-analysis. 21 Although the overall time to RTS did not differ, we did observe a trend of more HTO patients returning within 4 months (33% versus 18%), which was likely not statistically significant due to the small sample size. A possible explanation for the lower percentage of KJD patients that RTS ≤4 months is the distraction device. 26 Interestingly, no KJD patients reported improved sports ability at follow-up compared to 13% of HTO patients. Still, the median Tegner score was 3.5 in the KJD group compared to 3.0 in the HTO group, which could indicate somewhat higher mean postoperative activity levels for the KJD group. For both groups, the postoperative Tegner scores were lower than the reported presymptomatic Tegner scores. Eleven previous