Increased Prevalence and Associated Costs of Psychiatric Comorbidities in Patients Undergoing Sports Medicine Operative Procedures

Purpose To evaluate the prevalence of preoperatively diagnosed psychiatric comorbidities and the impact of these comorbidities on the healthcare costs of ten common orthopaedic sports medicine procedures. Methods Patients undergoing 10 common sports medicine procedures from 2007 to 2017q1 were identified using the Humana claims database. These procedures included anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction; posterior cruciate ligament reconstruction; medial collateral ligament repair/reconstruction; Achilles repair/reconstruction; Rotator cuff repair; meniscectomy/meniscus repair; hip arthroscopy; arthroscopic shoulder labral repair; patellofemoral instability procedures; and shoulder instability repair. Patients were stratified by preoperative diagnoses of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. Cohorts included patients with ≥1 psychiatric comorbidity (psychiatric) versus those without psychiatric comorbidities (no psychiatric). Differences in costs across groups were compared using Mann–Whitney U tests, with significance defined as P < .05. Linear regression analysis was used to assess rates of procedures per year from 2006 to 2016. Results In total, 226,402 patients (57.7% male) from 2007 to 2017q1 were assessed. The prevalence of ≥1 psychiatric comorbidity within the entire database was 10.31% (reference) versus 21.21% in those patients undergoing the 10 investigated procedures. Patients with psychiatric comorbidity most frequently underwent rotator cuff repair (28%), hip labral repair (26.3%) and meniscectomy/meniscus repair (25.0%%) had ≥1 psychiatric comorbidity. Compared with the no psychiatric cohort, diagnosis of ≥1 psychiatric comorbidity was associated with increased health care costs for all 10 sports medicine procedures ($9678.81 vs $6436.20, P < .0001). Conclusions The prevalence of preoperatively diagnosed psychiatric comorbidities among patients undergoing orthopaedic sports medicine procedures is high. The presence of psychiatric comorbidities preoperatively was associated with increased postoperative costs following all investigated orthopaedic sports medicine procedures. Level of Evidence Level III; retrospective comparative study.