Expensive wait for hip replacements

Drawing on around 40,000 responses from patients selected from the Swedish Hip Arthroplasty Register, the thesis looks at how hip replacement patients perceive their health-related quality of life and level of pain both before and after the operation, as well as how satisfied they are with the results.

“Although the majority report a considerable improvement in their health-related quality of life and are pain-free after their hip replacement, we show that around 5-10% do not improve or have actually deteriorated one year after the operation,” says Ola Rolfson, researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy’s Department of Orthopaedics.

He explains that there are several reasons for the failure of some patients to get better in the short term. For example, patients with anxiety or depression are more likely to report worse results. However, more research is needed to understand the factors that affect post-operative outcomes.

The thesis also looks at how hip disease impacts on patients’ need for a variety of resources when waiting for a hip replacement, and how this, in turn, translates into additional expense for the patient, relatives and society in general. It emerged that the disease costs around SEK 60,000 (approx. 6000 Euro) in the year before the operation, and that a long wait was linked to higher consumption of resources. This works out at SEK 5,000 (approx. 500 Euro) per month for every patient on the waiting list.

“Doing the right thing, doing the thing right and doing it at the right time is the major challenge facing orthopaedics in the future,” says Rolfson. “The thesis adds information that will make it possible for hip replacement surgery to take another step in the right direction.”

Using the results set out in his thesis, Rolfson will be working to develop a tool that can help to predict and discuss the risks and expected results of surgery in each individual case.

The Swedish Hip Arthroplasty Register is a national healthcare quality register funded by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions and Region Västra Götaland. The register undertakes research in conjunction with the Sahlgrenska Academy.

The thesis has been successfully defended.

For more information, please contact:
 Ola Rolfson
Tel.: +46(0)70 522 6386
E-mail: ola.rolfson@vgregion.se

Media Contact

Helena Aaberg idw

All latest news from the category: Health and Medicine

This subject area encompasses research and studies in the field of human medicine.

Among the wide-ranging list of topics covered here are anesthesiology, anatomy, surgery, human genetics, hygiene and environmental medicine, internal medicine, neurology, pharmacology, physiology, urology and dental medicine.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors