Orthopedics This Week (OTW) highlights the findings of new research by HSS that unexpectedly found younger patients had higher rates of early mechanical complications than older patients. A national insurance database was queried from 2007-2015 for all patients who underwent primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and showed patients under age 40 years had higher rates of diabetes mellitus, inflammatory arthritis, drug abuse, and smoking status compared to the rest of the cohort.

OTW spoke to co-author Mark P. Figgie, MD, hip and knee surgeon at HSS about the research objective who said, "Clinically, we are seeing a fairly dramatic increase in younger patients having knee replacement and we wanted to figure out how they were doing against older patients. We wanted to determine if the durability was as good if not better than that of the older patients." When asked about using 40 years of age as a cutoff, Dr. Figgie stated, "The data was provided to us by decades. While other studies have looked at 50 and below, we wanted to look at the youngest group separately since they need the best durability. These younger patients don't have the same survivorship and are having more mechanical problems. They are less healthy, some have diabetes, have had prior surgeries and have more instability and swelling after surgery."

Dr. Figgie concluded, "We are finalizing the manuscript and will likely submit for publication within the next three months."

Read the full article at ryortho.com.