Patients older than 65 years had more postoperative complications after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair

Venkat Boddapati

LAS VEGAS — Results presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting showed patients older than 65 years had a significant increase in postoperative medical complications after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair compared with younger patients.

Venkat Boddapati , MD, and colleagues stratified nearly 24,000 patients who underwent arthroscopic rotator cuff repair into three age cohorts: younger than 55 years of age; 55 years to 65 years of age; and older than 65 years of age. Researchers compared postoperative complications, discharge destination and readmissions between the age cohorts using bivariate and multivariate analyses.

“There were significant differences in baseline patient characteristics,” Boddapati said in his presentation here. “Older patients tended to be female, have a lower body mass index, higher medical comorbidity burden, including diabetes, smoking history, [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] COPD, hypertension [and] preoperative corticosteroid use.”

He added older patients also had shorter operative duration and higher American Society of Anesthesiologists classification.

Boddapati noted aggregated complication rates of 1.46 and 1.13 for patients younger than 55 years old and older than 65 years old, respectively, with the most common complications being urinary tract infection and respiratory complications.

“The rate of readmissions was increased 1.6% for over 65 [years of age] and 0.78% for under 55 [years old],” Boddapati said. “These differences were statistically significant on bivariate analysis, but relevance clinically is yet to be determined.”

According to results of a multivariate analysis, patients aged greater than 65 years had an association with the highest rate of adverse outcomes, Boddapati noted.

“Patients who were over 65 [years old] relative to under 55 [years old] had two times the odds of experiencing any complication, three and seven times the odds of experiencing a respiratory and urinary tract infection,” he said. “These differences were not seen largely for those 55 to 65 [years of age], indicating a sort of dose-dependent impact of age on postoperative outcomes.” – by Casey Tingle

Reference:

Boddapati V, et al. Abstract 204. Presented at: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting; March 12-16, 2019; Las Vegas.

Disclosure: Boddapati reports no relevant financial disclosures.