CHICAGO — Patients 80 years or older undergoing primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA) have similar odds of complications compared with 65- to 79-year-old patients, an analysis of more than 1.7 million cases suggests.
Priscilla Varghese, MBA, MS, and an MD candidate at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, New York, led the research, presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) 2022 Annual Meeting.
Priscilla Varghese
Varghese's team queried a Medicare claims database for the years 2005-2014 and analyzed information from 295,908 octogenarians and 1.4 million control patients aged 65-79 who received TKA.
Study group patients were randomly matched to controls in a 1:5 ratio according to gender and comorbidities, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, and kidney failure.
Octogenarians were found to have higher incidence and odds of 90-day readmission rates (10.59% vs. 9.35%; odds ratio [OR], 1.15; 95% CI, 1.13 - 1.16; P < .0001).
Hospital stays were also longer (3.69 days ± 1.95 vs 3.23 days ± 1.83; P < .0001) compared with controls.
Reassuring Older Patients
However, Varghese told Medscape Medical Newsshe was surprised to find that the older group had equal incidence and odds of developing medical complications (1.26% vs 1.26%; OR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.96 - 1.03;
