Study identifies factors that contribute to trend of TKAs in younger, more diverse patients

KNEE

Posted on the ORTHOSuperSite March 26, 2010

Study identifies factors that contribute to trend of TKAs in younger, more diverse patients

Investigators have recently identified emerging national trends in total knee arthroplasty, such as a decreased length of hospital stay with more patients being discharged to short- or long-term facilities postoperatively and decreased Medicare payments for the procedure.

“This information will be useful for the future,” orthopedic resident Michele R. D’Apuzzo, MD, stated in a Mayo Clinic press release. Her team presented the results of their study at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in New Orleans.

Younger patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty (TKA) will remain a trend, she noted.

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“But we may also see more failures and revisions, and physicians and medical facilities need to prepare for that,” D’Apuzzo stated in the release.

CDC database used

D’Apuzzo and colleagues conducted a population-based study that compared data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 776, 065 patients who had TKA between 1990 and 1994, and 2,130,531 patients who underwent the procedure between 2002 and 2006.

The investigators found that the average age of the patients in the second group was 2 years younger than that of patients in the first group.

They also discovered that the percentage of minorities having TKAs increased by 1.4% between the two time periods.

In addition, the investigators reported a 12% drop in Medicare payments for TKA surgery between the two time periods. Length of stay also decreased from about 8.5 days to 4 days. They also noticed that the latest cohort showed a trend toward having their TKAs performed in smaller hospitals with less than 300 beds.

References:
D’Apuzzo MR, Hernandez-Polo VH, Sierra RJ. National trends in primary total knee arthroplasty. A population-based study. Paper #681. Presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. March 9-13, 2010. New Orleans.
www.mayo.edu
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