Patients With Significant Medical Issues at Greater Risk During Total Knee Arthroplasty

A study by researchers at the Hospital for Special Surgery has discovered that patients with a history of significant medical issues are at risk for major complications following total knee arthroplasty, according to the abstract in Anesthesia & Analgesia.

Lead author Stavros Memtsoudis, MD, PhD, and his colleagues collected and analyzed data from the Nationwide Inpatient Surgery from 1998-2007. The study included all reported cases of elective bilateral total knee arthroplasty.

The study found 42,003 database entries representing 206,573 elective bilateral total knee arthroplasties. The researchers reported an incidence rate of 9.5 percent for major in-hospital complications and mortality. The study showed that factors such as advanced age, male gender, congestive heart failure and pulmonary hypertension posed the most significant risk.

According to the study, patients undergoing bilateral TKA were 5.5 times more likely to experience adverse outcomes if they had congestive heart failure and four times more likely if they had pulmonary hypertension. Patients older than 75 were twice as likely to display complications, and men were 50 percent more likely than women to experience complications.

Read the Anesthesia & Analgesia abstract on total knee arthroplasty.

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