JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

YOUR DAI­LY HEALTH

Knee replacements soar among older people

by

20120927

Just like age-de­fy­ing ba­by boomers, old­er folks have seen a surge in knee-re­place­ment surg­eries, dri­ven part­ly by a de­sire to stay ac­tive and by joint-dam­ag­ing obe­si­ty. The find­ings are in a study of more than three mil­lion Medicare pa­tients, aged 65 and old­er, who got ar­ti­fi­cial knees from 1991 through 2010. Al­most 10 per cent of the op­er­a­tions were re­dos-re­plac­ing worn-out ar­ti­fi­cial joints. The num­ber of ini­tial knee-re­place­ment surg­eries each year on these old­er pa­tients more than dou­bled dur­ing that time, ris­ing to near­ly 244,000 in 2010. Pa­tients were in their mid-70s on av­er­age when they had surgery; that age edged up slight­ly dur­ing the study. The age­ing pop­u­la­tion and ris­ing num­bers of Medicare en­rollees con­tributed to the in­crease. But the per capi­ta rate al­so in­creased, from about three surg­eries per 10,000 en­rollees in 1991 to five per 10,000 in 2010.

"There's a huge per­cent­age of old­er adults who are liv­ing longer and want to be ac­tive," and knee re­place­ment surgery is very ef­fec­tive, said lead au­thor Dr Pe­ter Cram, an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of in­ter­nal med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa. The pace of growth slowed in more re­cent years-pos­si­bly be­cause in­creas­ing num­bers of younger adults have al­so been get­ting ar­ti­fi­cial knees, which typ­i­cal­ly last 15 to 20 years. The trou­bled econ­o­my may al­so have slowed de­mand for an op­er­a­tion that costs about $15,000, the study au­thors said. About 600,000 knee-re­place­ment surg­eries are done each year na­tion­wide on adults of all ages, cost­ing a to­tal of $9 bil­lion, the au­thors said. A jour­nal ed­i­to­r­i­al says mea­sures are need­ed to con­trol costs of these op­er­a­tions, not­ing that de­mand has been pro­ject­ed to rise to as many as al­most 4 mil­lion knee op­er­a­tions an­nu­al­ly by 2030.

Obese old­er pa­tients get­ting their first op­er­a­tions ac­count­ed for al­most 12 per cent, up from four per cent. The rate was about the same in those get­ting re­dos. Obe­si­ty takes a toll on joints and can con­tribute to arthri­tis, a lead­ing rea­son for knee re­place­ment surgery. The av­er­age hos­pi­tal stay dropped from al­most eight days to three and a half days, but many pa­tients were sent to re­hab cen­tres, most­ly out­pa­tient cen­tres in the most re­cent years. Read­mis­sion rates af­ter first and sec­ond op­er­a­tions in­creased in re­cent years for rea­sons in­clud­ing in­fec­tions and surgery com­pli­ca­tions. The re­sults sug­gest that short­en­ing hos­pi­tal stays doesn't al­ways achieve the goal of re­duc­ing costs, since read­mis­sions in­creased-a trend seen with oth­er types of surg­eries and ill­ness­es. (AP)


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored