RA Higher Readmission Rate Than OA

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who have undergone a joint replacement are more likely to be readmitted to a hospital within 90 days than are patients who have osteoarthritis (OA). That is the result of a study in which investigators analyzed 34, 311 joint replacement procedures performed during the three-year period from 2009 to 2011. Of the surgeries, there were 33, 815 performed on OA patients and 496 performed on patients with RA.

As reported by Nicola Garrett in Family Practice News over the three-year period of the study, 42 RA patients were readmitted. The most common reasons for readmission were joint prosthesis infection (10.2%) and septicemia (10.2%). Of the 33, 815 surgeries performed on patients with OA, 2, 277 patients were readmitted. The most common reason for the readmission was joint prosthesis infection (5.7%).

The study authors noted that a 90-day readmission rate of 6.8% translates to more than 70, 000 admissions annually in the United States. Garrett noted that the analysis “revealed an increasing trend in the incidence of 90-day readmissions in rheumatoid arthritis patients by year; at 5.8% for 2009, 8.9% for 2010 and 10.6% for 2011.”

“We considered several patient, procedure, surgeon, and hospital variables as important covariates and adjusted for those that were significant in our multivariable-adjusted model, indicating that the increasing readmission rate in RA patients is not explained by these variables, ” they wrote.

Garrett noted that “the effects of medications and pre- and postoperative rehabilitation programs could have played a role in readmission rates in RA patients, but the authors did not have the information to analyze the impact of these factors.”