Rate My Professor Yana Pryymachenko

Yana Pryymachenko is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Musculoskeletal Outcomes Research (CMOR) within the Department of Surgery and Critical Care, Faculty of Medicine, University of Otago. She specializes in health economics applied to musculoskeletal conditions, including osteoarthritis, chronic opioid use following joint arthroplasty, cruciate ligament injuries, and cost-effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Her research leverages New Zealand linked administrative health data for matched cohort analyses to evaluate long-term patient outcomes, healthcare utilization, and economic impacts. Pryymachenko collaborates closely with Professor J. Haxby Abbott and teams across orthopaedic surgery and primary care, contributing to studies on treatment expectations in manual therapy for knee osteoarthritis, global rating of change validity in chronic low back pain, and epidemiology of injuries by ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

Key publications include 'Measurement properties of the patient-specific functional scale and its current uses: an updated systematic review of 57 studies using COSMIN guidelines' (2022, Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, 56 citations), 'Economic evaluation: a reader’s guide to studies of cost-effectiveness' (2022, Archives of Physiotherapy, 37 citations), 'Risk factors for chronic opioid use following hip and knee arthroplasty: evidence from New Zealand population data' (2020, The Journal of Arthroplasty, 28 citations), 'Reliability, validity, responsiveness, and minimum important change of the stair climb test in adults with hip and knee osteoarthritis' (2023, Arthritis Care & Research, 24 citations), 'The long-term impacts of opioid use before and after joint arthroplasty: matched cohort analysis of New Zealand linked register data' (2023, Family Practice), 'Epidemiology of cruciate ligament injuries in New Zealand: exploring differences by ethnicity and socioeconomic status' (2023, Injury Prevention, 9 citations), and 'Cost-effectiveness of low dose colchicine prophylaxis when starting allopurinol using the “start-low go-slow” approach for gout' (2025, Arthritis Care & Research). In 2020, she received Health Research Council funding of $29,845 for 12 months for 'The health economic case for implementing ACL injury prevention interventions'. Her work informs clinical guidelines and healthcare policy in pain management and orthopaedics.