Abstract
Background
Need for hip or knee arthroplasty is rapidly increasing in aging society nowadays. Accordingly, orthopedic surgeries for patients with various diseases of high mortality rates are becoming indispensable. Patients with liver cirrhosis undergoing major orthopedic surgery like joint arthroplasty are at risk of many complications including infection and excessive bleeding. In this study, we want to present helpful measures to prevent expected complications that can occur with hip or knee arthroplasty performed on patients with liver cirrhosis through comparative analysis on the prognosis of relevant patients studied at our hospitals.
Patients and method
The study involves a retrospective comparison on 210 patients who underwent hip (71 patients) or knee (138 patients) arthroplasty in Chonnam National University Hospital, Hwasun Chonnam National University Hospital or Chonnam National University Bitgoeul Hospital. Prognoses of patients with underlying disease of liver cirrhosis and those without are compared with measures of amount of bleeding, transfer to an intensive care unit or medical department, duration of hospital stay, readmission within 30 days, 90 days and post-operative complication. To find out the rationale behind the differences in prognosis between these two groups, comparisons on total surgical time and blood loss during surgery were made. Also, the objectivity of the surgical treatment at our hospitals was ensured through comparing the postoperative short- and long-term mortality rates of the patients with liver cirrhosis who underwent hip or knee arthroplasty at our hospitals.
Results
Among patients who underwent hip or knee arthroplasty, those with underlying condition of the liver cirrhosis show an increase in amount of bleeding, duration of hospital stay, number of blood transfusion, infection rate and a decrease in long-term survival rate compared to those who do not have liver cirrhosis. It was found that all of these factors were differed with severity of liver cirrhosis (measured according to Child-Pugh Score) and combined another disease (CRF) and became more profound when severity of liver cirrhosis increased.
Conclusion
It was possible to show that the risk of arthroplasty on patients with liver cirrhosis is much higher than on cases of normal patients. Performing arthroplasty on patients with liver cirrhosis seems to put them under higher risk of increased blood loss and infection rates. Therefore, it is advised to prepare adequate preoperative and postoperative medical care, decrease surgical time and bleeding loss when performing hip or knee arthroplasty on patients with cirrotic liver disease.
