An Assessement of the Severity of Knee Osteoarthritis in the University of Benin Teaching Hospital

Osteoarthritis is the most common arthritis affecting millions of people worldwide. Knee osteoarthritis calls for serious medical concern as severe cases/advance stages can impair mobility and lead to a poor quality of life. The objective is to assess the severity of knee osteoarthritis and to determine its association with demographic data. This descriptive consecutive study assesses the severity of osteoarthritis by the use of a questionnaire administered to patients visiting the Orthopedic and Rheumatology Departments of the Hospital. Data collected were entered into Microsoft excel and exported into the statistical package for social science which was used to assess the association between sociodemographic data and severity of the disease. P-value less than 0.05 was interpreted to be statistically significant. Only 209 patients were included in the study and the severe, very severe and extremely severe cases accounted for 17.6%, 23.7%, and 44.0% of the cases respectively. Females accounted for 69.9% of the study participants and they also had more severe cases than males. Sex, advanced age, a high body mass index and co-morbid disease condition (Hypertension) were highly associated with the severity of osteoarthritis (p-value <0.05). The majority of the cases of osteoarthritis were either very severe or extremely severe and these cases were mostly reported by females, older patients, overweight or obese patients and those that have hypertension as a co-morbid condition.