Applying models of care for total hip and knee arthroplasty: External validation of a published predictive model to identify extended stay risk prior to lower-limb arthroplasty.

Objective: This study aimed to externally validate a reported model for identifying patients requiring extended stay following lower limb arthroplasty in a new setting.

Design: External validation of a previously reported prognostic model, using retrospective data.

Setting: Medium-sized hospital orthopaedic department, Australia.

Participants: Electronic medical records were accessed for data collection between Sep-2019 and Feb-2020 and retrospective data extracted from 200 randomly selected total hip or knee arthroplasty patients.

Intervention: Participants received total hip or knee replacement between 2-Feb-16 and 4-Apr-19. This study was a non-interventional retrospective study.

Main measures: Model validation was assessed with discrimination, calibration on both original and adjusted forms of the candidate model. Decision curve analysis was conducted on the outputs of the adjusted model to determine net benefit at a predetermined decision threshold (0.5).

Results: The original model performed poorly, grossly overestimating length of stay with mean calibration of -3.6 (95% confidence interval -3.9 to -3.2) and calibration slope of 0.52. Performance improved following adjustment of the model intercept and model coefficients (mean calibration 0.48, 95% confidence interval 0.16 to 0.80 and slope of 1.0), but remained poorly calibrated at low and medium risk threshold and net benefit was modest (three additional patients per hundred identified as at-risk) at the a-priori risk threshold.

Conclusions: External validation demonstrated poor performance when applied to a new patient population and would provide limited benefit for our institution. Implementation of predictive models for arthroplasty should include practical assessment of discrimination, calibration and net benefit at a clinically acceptable threshold.