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Risk of ischemic, hemorrhagic stroke higher in elderly THA patients
Patients who undergo total hip replacement are more at risk for cardiovascular events during the first 12 weeks following surgery, according to recent research.
Ischemic stroke increased by almost 4.7-fold and hemorrhagic stroke by 4.4-fold in the first 2 weeks after THA, researchers said in Stroke. The risk remained elevated for 6 weeks for ischemic stroke and 12 weeks for hemorrhagic stroke.
“This is the first study to evaluate the risk of stroke in patients undergoing total hip replacement compared to people in the general population who did not undergo the surgery, but were matched for age, sex and geographical region,” Frank de Vries, PhD, PharmD, lead author and assistant professor of pharmacoepidemiology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, stated in a press release.
He added, “It makes sense to evaluate the risk of stroke 2 weeks after surgery. There is an increasing tendency to decrease the length of hospital stay because of improved therapy and because of strategies to reduce costs and mobilize patients as soon as possible.”
Vries and colleagues examined Danish registries and compared 66,583 patients who had undergone total hip replacement to 199,995 patients in matched controls who had not undergone the surgery, according to the abstract. The study population consisted of mostly women (63.1%) and participants were on average 72 years old.
Reference:
Lalmohamed A. Stroke. 2012;doi: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.112.668509.
Disclosure: The authors received funds from The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research to conduct this study.
