Hip Replacement Can Cause Heart Attack
It appears that having a knee or a hip replacement solves an issue but causes another. Despite having to go through the sheer pain of having a body part removed, specialists now agree that heart attack rates are greatly increased after the operation. This leaves doctors and patients with a life changing question: do we remove a knee and increase chances of dying or do we simply accept a broken body?
These are the findings of a new study, which indicates how difficult the procedure actually is. Osteoarthritis is a condition that affects approximately 27 million Americas over the age of 25. The study also indicates that the chances of a heart attack are very high within a month after the operation. While they do fall over time, this first month is extremely difficult for patients and doctors alike.
The former need to get accustomed to the idea that they might die at any moment and doctors need to keep a watchful eye at all times. Even so, there is still a slight possibility that with the appropriate procedure, the patient might pass away. In short, it is gambling with life. You can win or you can lose, but nobody can tell you exactly how it is going to end. It is a risk you have to take.
Participants in the study were 50 of age or older, having been diagnosed with osteoarthritis in between 2000 and 2012. All of the patients had undergone hip arthroplasty and out of the 138 controls that occurred, 128 patients experienced a heart attack within the first month after the surgery.
There was also an average follow-up period of 4.2 years in which 306 patients who had undergone knee operations, yet again, experienced heart attacks. So there is something about the human body that just does not react well to these types of operations. While the reason behind this reaction is still unknown, specialists believe that this is more likely to happen to people who had already been operated in the same location several times. Yet this is not something that the study actively tracked.
Every year, 1.8 million people are exposed to this sort of danger after these surgeries are performed. Osteoarthritis usually occurs at the joints of the hands, hips, backbone posing a threat to the patient’s health. Thus, medical decisions have to be made. But with this new study, it looks like decisions are going to be harder than they were until now.
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