Living With Both a Total Ankle Replacement and an Ankle Fusion: A Qualitative Study From the Patients’ Perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Total ankle replacement (TAR) and ankle fusion are effective treatments for end-stage ankle arthritis. Comparative studies elucidate differences in treatment outcomes; however, the literature lacks evidence demonstrating what outcomes are important to patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate patients' experiences of living with both a TAR and ankle fusion. METHODS: This research study used qualitative description. Individuals were selected from a cohort of patients with TAR and/or ankle fusion (n = 1254). Eligible patients were English speaking with a TAR and contralateral ankle fusion, and a minimum of 1 year since their most recent ankle reconstruction. Surgeries were performed by a single experienced surgeon, and semistructured interviews were conducted by a single researcher in a private hospital setting or by telephone. Ankle Osteoarthritis Scale (AOS) scores, radiographs, and ancillary surgical procedures were collected to characterize patients. Themes were derived through qualitative data analysis. RESULTS: Ten adults (8 men, 2 women), ages 59 to 90 years, were included. Average AOS pain and disability scores were similar for both surgeries for most patients. Participants discussed perceptions of each reconstructed ankle. Ankle fusions were considered stable and strong, but also stiff and compromising balance. TARs were considered flexible and more like a "normal ankle," though patients expressed concerns about their TAR "turning" on uneven ground. Individuals applied this knowledge to facilitate movement, particularly during a first step and transitioning between positions. They described the need for careful foot placement and attention to the environment to avoid potential challenges. CONCLUSION: This study provides insight into the experiences of individuals living with a TAR and ankle fusion. In this unusual but limited group of patients, we found that each ankle reconstruction was generally perceived to have different characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages. Most participants articulated a preference for their TAR. These findings can help clinicians better counsel patients on expectations after TAR and ankle fusion, and improve patient-reported outcome measures by better capturing meaningful outcomes for patients. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level IV, case series.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".