You are here

  • Home
  • Online First
  • Regional versus general anesthesia for total hip and knee arthroplasty: a nationwide retrospective cohort study

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Regional anesthesia and acute pain
Regional versus general anesthesia for total hip and knee arthroplasty: a nationwide retrospective cohort study
  1. Tak Kyu Oh1,2 and
  2. In-Ae Song1,2
  1. 1Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seongnam, South Korea
  2. 2Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
  1. Correspondence to Dr In-Ae Song, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seongnam 13620, Korea (the Republic of); songoficu{at}outlook.kr

Abstract

Introduction We aimed to determine whether regional anesthesia (RA) has any advantages over general anesthesia (GA) in total joint arthroplasty (TJA) in terms of mortality and postoperative complications.

Methods This population-based retrospective cohort study included data of adults who underwent total knee or hip arthroplasty under RA or GA between 2016 and 2021 from the National Health Insurance Service of South Korea. RA included spinal or epidural anesthesia or a combination of both. Endpoints were 30-day mortality, 90-day mortality, and postoperative complications. Propensity score (PS) matching was used for statistical analysis.

Results We included 517 960 patients (RA, n=380 698; GA, n=137 262) who underwent TJA. After PS matching, 186 590 patients (93 295 in each group) were included in the final analysis. In the logistic regression analyses using the PS-matched cohort, the RA group compared with the GA group showed 31% (OR: 0.69; 95% CI, 0.60 to 0.80; p<0.001) and 22% (OR: 0.78; 95% CI, 0.72 to 0.85; p<0.001) lower 30-day and 90-day mortality rates, respectively. However, the total postoperative complication rate did not differ significantly between the two groups (p=0.105).

Conclusion RA compared with GA was associated with improved 30-day and 90-day survival outcomes in patients who underwent TJA. However, the postoperative complication rate did not differ significantly. Therefore, our results should be interpreted with caution, and more well-designed future studies are needed to clarify the most appropriate type of anesthesia for TJA.

  • Epidemiology
  • Postoperative Complications
  • Lower Extremity

Data availability statement

Data are available upon reasonable request.

https://doi.org/10.1136/rapm-2024-105440

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Data availability statement

    Data are available upon reasonable request.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors TKO designed the study, analyzed and interpreted the data, and drafted the manuscript. I-AS contributed to the study conceptualization, data acquisition, and manuscript review. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. IAS is the guarantor.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.