To verify the responsiveness, and internal consistency of the New Knee Society knee scoring system(New-KSS) in the patients treated with unicompartment knee arthroplasty.

New-KSS proposed by the American Knee Association in 2012 was used to evaluate the efficacy of unicompartment knee arthroplasty in treating knee anteromedial osteoarthritis. The inpatients who received primary unicompartment knee arthroplasty were screened for trial participants according to the knee anteromedial osteoarthritis inclusion criteria; the bilateral, multi-compartment, inflammatory or recently infected patients were excluded. The selected participants were evaluated with New-KSS and knee injury and osteoarthritis outcome score (KOOS) before the operation, three and 12 months after the surgery. Responsiveness, and internal consistency of the New-KSS scoring system in the patients treated with unicompartment knee arthroplasty were varified by analyzing the acquired data using Cronbach’ s alpha and Spearman correlation coefficient.

A total of 65 patients were included in this research according to the enrollment criteria. Cronbach’ s alpha of different subscale varied from 0.70 to 0.91, reflecting that there existed high degree of internal consistency. Cohen’d of different subscale ranged from 1.83 to 4.43, indicating that there existed high degree of responsiveness. Corresponding subscales between New-KSS and KOOS had ideal correlation, indicating that New-KSS and KOOS showed better consistency in evaluating the same object.

Relating data analysis supports the responsiveness of New-KSS in the evaluation of medial unicompartment osteoarthritis of the knee treated with UKA, the internal consistency is acceptable as well; New-KSS also has favorable adaptability at different time points.