Revision Estimates Haunt TKRs (Biloine Young @OTW)
While it is great that over a million and a half Americans have regained their mobility through knee replacement (TKR) surgery, the future financial implications of those surgeries may be worrisome. Reason? Those new knees are in adults younger than 70 meaning the recipients are “likely to live long enough to be at risk for revision,” said Elena Losina, Ph.D., of Boston University, in the presentation of her study at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) annual meeting.
As reported February 13 by John Gever of MedPage Today, Losina developed her TKR incidence data from the Multicenter Osteoarthritis Study and the Osteoarthritis Initiative and extrapolated it to the entire population on the basis of osteoarthritis occurrences established in the National Health and Nutrition examination survey. She fed these numbers into a system that uses simulations to estimate TKR prevalence by age and gender, the progression of symptomatic osteoarthritis, and the likelihood of revision.
Among her finding was that 2% of women and more than 1% of men in their 50s already have received one or more artificial knees. When she investigate...
