Hip Surgery Safe, Effective in Psoriatic Arthritis

Medscape—October 12, 2015

Medscape's Pam Harrison reports that in a comparison of outcomes after hip replacement surgery between patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and cutaneous psoriasis (PsC) and control patients with osteoarthritis (OA), neither PsA nor psoriatic skin disease at the time of surgery were independent risk factors for worse pain or function after total hip arthroplasty (THA).

According to Susan M. Goodman, MD, a rheumatologist at Hospital for Special Surgery, "The older literature suggested that patients with PsA were prone to extremely high rates of complications, specifically infection, but they also didn't tend to do as well functionally after THA — they developed contractures and had poorer functional outcomes."

The article also notes that lead author and HSS rheumatologist, Lisa A. Mandl, MD, and colleagues identified 63 patients with PsA and 153 patients with PsC who had undergone THA at the hospital.

"And our hypothesis was that these patients would do as well as patients with OA, so we weren't surprised by the results, but we were delighted that we were dead-on," continued Dr. Goodman.

To read more, visit www.medscape.com.