Heart Risk from Hip Surgery

Hip and knee replacements have become increasingly common, and physicians have felt confident about the risks of this type of orthopedic surgery. An additional threat has just been discovered, though. Danish investigators reviewing the records of 95,000 patients found that about one in 200 suffered a heart attack in the month and a half after hip replacement surgery. The figure for knee replacements was one in 500. That means people receiving new hips were about 25 times more likely than their peers who had not undergone surgery to have a heart attack.
The researchers also compared post-operative recovery of patients after joint replacement to that of patients undergoing hernia repair surgery, to control for the stress of surgery. People who’d had joint replacements were 21 times more likely to experience a heart attack than those who’d had the hernia procedure. This research may lead to changes in protocol for people who want joint replacement to try to keep them safer.
[Archives of Internal Medicine, online July 23, 2012]