OAISYS has developed a Knee Surgery Triage (KST) tool aimed to streamline the evaluation and care of the Osteoarthritic (OA) Knee from the General Physician onward. The KST will function as a web based service.  It is used to quantify the arthritic state of a patient’s knee based on a Disability Evaluation and  Grading OA from standing and Patella skyline radiographs. Together, these measures provide a quantitative index of the Arthritic Severity.

This Knee Severity Index is used to guide primary care physicians to make appropriate care decisions and the time for surgical referrals. For the surgeons, the benefits are the provision of evidenced based information on the level of disability and radiographic grade which helps  them to select the most appropriate surgical solutions.  For the health care funding agency, these approaches help prioritize the needs for surgery and optimize the provision of surgical resources. As a web-based service, KST is readily deployed at remote sites where access to appropriate referral clinics and surgeons is limited.

The KST combines the use of  health questionnaires and standarized radiographic grading to create an OA Severity Index (SI). The reliability of  the SI has been validated in clinical studies for more information click here. Patients with a low SI scores were provided with non-surgical options while those with higher SI  were offered surgery.

We anticipate that the adoption of these evidenced based approaches will optimize care, reduce wait times and lessen the risk of Total Knee Surgery poor outcomes that occur when surgery is done too early or too late.

For more information on use of the KST please contact us