Medication Management in Joint Replacement Surgery

Medscape—August 14, 2017

Medscape interviewed Susan M. Goodman, MD, rheumatologist at HSS, about the new set of recommendations developed by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) for patients with rheumatologic conditions undergoing joint surgery.

Dr. Goodman explained why new guidelines were developed and said there is an increase in all complications for patients with RA. "Looking at this picture, we thought that there could be room to reduce the adverse outcomes related to arthroplasty if we could modify perioperative medication management."

When asked what was the process like putting together the guideline committee, Dr. Goodman said it was a great experience getting an 'expert panel' of orthopedists, rheumatologists, patients and methodologists together.

"We realized that we wanted to address the needs of adults with rheumatic diseases who were taking these medications for RA, psoriatic arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, or ankylosing spondylitis and were undergoing elective surgery," said Dr. Goodman.

Dr. Goodman added that she is interested to see the changes in outcome as a result of the guidelines. "Infection is infrequent enough that we would not expect to see an immediate change, but hopefully we will."

Read the full article at Medscape.com [subscription required].