OBJECTIVES:

Describe health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with osteoarthritis (OA) from Sweden, including subgroups who may be disproportionately affected.

METHODS:

As part of the BISCUITS study, patients were identified from 2011─2017 in the Swedish National Quality Register for Better management of patients with OA (NQR BOA), which includes patients seeking healthcare due to OA-related pain. Patients with cancer (C00─C43/C45─C97) were excluded. Five-level EQ-5D utility score and self-reported pain (visual analog scale) at index were extracted for the overall population and 12 subgroups with medical histories/treatment characteristics suggestive of poor HRQoL.

RESULTS:

Data for 85,134 patients were extracted (mean age 67 years; subgroups n=1,303─50,787). Most patients (59.7%) reported the knee to be the most painful joint. Mean EQ-5D score was 0.61 (SD: 0.23) with most patients reporting ‘lasting pain’ (82.7%) vs. ‘recurrent pain’ (16.8%), and a mean pain intensity score of 5.45/10 (SD: 2.05). Almost all subgroups had a lower mean EQ-5D than the overall population, with the top 10% of healthcare resource users in the year post-index (n=1896) and patients with persistent opioid use (≥4500mg oral morphine equivalents [OMEQ] in the year pre-index; n=2529) reporting the lowest scores (0.45 [SD: 0.28]; 0.41 [SD: 0.29]). Lasting pain was reported by >90% of top healthcare users, those receiving three sequential pain medication classes pre-index to year post-index (n=20,350), persistent (≥4500mg [n=2529], ≥8100mg OMEQ [n=1400], or 180 defined daily doses in year pre-index [n=1303]) and non-persistent opioid users (all not defined as persistent; n=14,607). These groups also reported higher mean pain intensities than the overall population. Difficulty walking was reported in 19.6% of all patients, with a notably higher proportion among those only attending primary care (26.5%; n=12,779).

CONCLUSIONS:

Patients with OA in Sweden experienced substantial HRQoL burden with multiple groups being disproportionately affected. This suggests current treatment options are suboptimal.