Abstract
BackgroundPredicting the duration of sickness absence (SA) among sickness absent patients is a task many sickness certifying physicians as well as social insurance officers struggle with. Our aim was to develop a prediction model for prognosticating the duration of SA due to knee osteoarthritis.MethodsA population-based prospective study of SA spells was conducted using comprehensive microdata linked from five Swedish nationwide registers. All 12,098 new SA spells > 14 days due to knee osteoarthritis in 1/1 2010 through 30/6 2012 were included for individuals 18–64 years. The data was split into a development dataset (70 %, nspells =8468) and a validation data set (nspells =3690) for internal validation. Piecewise-constant hazards regression was performed to prognosticate the duration of SA (overall duration and duration > 90, >180, or > 365 days). Possible predictors were selected based on the log-likelihood loss when excluding them from the model.ResultsOf all SA spells, 53 % were > 90 days and 3 % >365 days. Factors included in the final model were age, sex, geographical region, extent of sickness absence, previous sickness absence, history of specialized outpatient healthcare and/or inpatient healthcare, employment status, and educational level. The model was well calibrated. Overall, discrimination was poor (c = 0.53, 95 % confidence interval (CI) 0.52–0.54). For predicting SA > 90 days, discrimination as measured by AUC was 0.63 (95 % CI 0.61–0.65), for > 180 days, 0.69 (95 % CI 0.65–0.71), and for SA > 365 days, AUC was 0.75 (95 % CI 0.72–0.78).ConclusionIt was possible to predict patients at risk of long-term SA (> 180 days) with acceptable precision. However, the prediction of duration of SA spells due to knee osteoarthritis has room for improvement.
Highlights
Osteoarthritis of the knee is a common musculoskeletal diagnosis, with an age-standardized prevalence estimated at 3–4 % in the Nordic region, with an incidence heavily increasing with age [1]
It could be expected that sickness absence (SA) certification due to knee osteoarthritis will remain a common task for treating physicians, as individuals with osteoarthritis are at almost twice the risk of SA as compared to the general population [8]
A clinical model for prognosticating the duration of a SA spell could potentially be useful as a decision-support tool, to aid identification of patients who are at risk of long-term SA and are most likely to benefit from additional active rehabilitation efforts
Summary
Osteoarthritis of the knee is a common musculoskeletal diagnosis, with an age-standardized prevalence estimated at 3–4 % in the Nordic region, with an incidence heavily increasing with age [1]. It could be expected that sickness absence (SA) certification due to knee osteoarthritis will remain a common task for treating physicians, as individuals with osteoarthritis are at almost twice the risk of SA as compared to the general population [8]. A clinical model for prognosticating the duration of a SA spell could potentially be useful as a decision-support tool, to aid identification of patients who are at risk of long-term SA and are most likely to benefit from additional active rehabilitation efforts. There has not been any model developed to predict the duration of a SA spell due to knee osteoarthritis. We aimed to develop a parsimonious prediction model of SA spell duration due to knee osteoarthritis, to be used in the Swedish healthcare system. Our aim was to develop a prediction model for prognosticating the duration of SA due to knee osteoarthritis
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