Does Age Matter? Trends Among Patients Undergoing Total Hip and Total Knee Replacement Surgery

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Research

Mentor

Lisa Mandl, MD

Scope

Total joint replacements are some of the most successful medical devices developed over the last 50 years. They enable millions of people to remain ambulatory and pain free, with minimal risk. Future use will likely be even higher, as it is estimated that by the year 2020, the population 65 and over in developed countries will increase by 71%. In addition, as the active baby boomer generation ages, it is anticipated that the rate of joint replacements in younger patients will also increase.

Given the changing demographic of these patients, it will be important to better characterize  these “young” and “old” arthroplasty patients. This project will evaluate whether there are differences between younger, (< 60 years) and older (>75 years) arthroplasty patients compared with those aged 60-75. This includes differences in gender, pre-operative pain, function, health status, intra-operative course, (type of device implanted, length of procedure, complications etc…) and patient expectations. In addition, we will also evaluate a sub-set of these patients on whom we have six month follow-up data, to determine if there is a difference in short term adverse events between older and younger hip and knee replacement patients.

This study will utilize the HSS/CERT Total Joint Replacement Registry, which is a prospective patient cohort with data on over 10,000 hip, knee, and shoulder replacements.

The role of the student will include:

  1. A literature review of the changing age demographic of hip and knee arthroplasty
    • A synthetic review will be written and submitted for publication
  2. Working with the HSS Biostatistics Core to clean and analyze data already collected in the HSS/CERT Total Joint Replacement Registry
  3. Compare different age groups with regards to baseline variables and six month outcomes
    • Determine if there are any significant trends that differentiate these groups, and if they influence intra-operative or six-month adverse events
    • Prepare a manuscript for publication

Previous experience with analyses of data helpful but not required.

Contact

Lisa Mandl, MD
email: mandll@hss.edu