Heart Attacks Accompany Joint Replacements

It is something else to worry about. A review of the medical records of more than 95, 000 adults who had hip or knee replacement surgeries between 1998 and 2008 in Denmark found that they ran a risk of having a heart attack within six weeks of their joint surgery. One in 200 of the individuals who had a hip replacement had a heart attack within six weeks of their joint surgery and one in 500 of those who had a knee replacement had an attack in the same time interval.

As reported by Brenda Goodman in WebMD Health News, the study found that people who had hip replacements were 25 times more likely to have heart attacks within two weeks of their procedures compared to adults of the same age and sex who did not have surgery. The incidence of heart attacks went up to 31 times more likely for those who had knee replacements. The researchers compared each patient with three people, of the same age and gender, who did not have a joint replaced.

“The risk of acute myocardial infarction is substantially increased in the first two weeks after total hip replacement and total knee replacement surgery compared with controls, ” wrote Arief Lalmohamed from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who led the study. Investigators found that the connection between joint surgeries and heart problems was especially high for patients aged 80 or older. It appeared that those under the age of 60 did not face increased risk.

Researchers studying the data noted that, while it is not clear that the hip and knee procedures themselves caused the heart attacks, it is reasonable to assume that they played some role as surgery and anesthesia itself increase the stress level on patients. The study was published in the July 2012 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.