If you're thinking of having knee replacement surgery you may just want to get a second opinion as a new study claims one out of three such surgeries in the U.S. aren't appropriate treatment.
The research, published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, states that there needs to be a consensus on patient selection criteria among U.S. doctors treating patients who may require such a procedure.
"To my knowledge, ours is the first U.S. study to compare validated appropriateness criteria with actual cases of knee replacement surgery," said Dr. Daniel Riddle from the Department of Physical Therapy at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, in a press statement.
According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality there are over 600,000 knee replacement surgeries each year in the U.S., and the last 15 years has seen exponential growth with an annual increase of 162 percent just in Medicare-covered surgeries between 1991 and 2010.
The release states that some medical experts believe the increasing number of surgeries is taking place because the surgery has become so effective. Others contend that there is over-use given subjective criteria used in determining if a replacement knee is needed.
According to the release, the average age of a knee surgery patient is 67 years old and more than half, 60 percent, are female. The study claims 44 percent of surgeries performed were found appropriate, 22 percent were inconclusive, and 34 percent were viewed as inappropriate.
"Our finding that one-third of knee replacements were inappropriate was higher than expected and linked to variation in knee pain severity and functional loss. These data highlight the need to develop patient selection criteria in the U.S.," said Riddle.
The release notes that another physician, Dr. Jeffery Katz of the Orthopedic and Arthritis Center for Outcomes Research at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, supports the research finding.
"I agree that we should be concerned about offering total knee replacements to subjects who endorse 'none' or 'mild' on all items of the WOMAC pain and function scales," states Katz in an editorial he wrote.
