TUESDAY, Dec. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Patients who have revision total hip replacement usually undergo the procedure at the hospital where they had their primary procedure or one with a similar volume of procedures, according to research published in the Dec. 1 issue of the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery.
Jeffrey N. Katz, M.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and colleagues examined Medicare claims of 4,448 revision procedures to determine what percentage of patients have revision total hip replacement at the same hospital where they had their initial procedure.
The researchers found that 64 percent of the revisions occurred at the same hospital where the initial procedure had taken place, and 3,306 (74 percent) were carried out at hospitals with the same volume stratum as the original hospital. Fewer than 10 percent were performed at lower-volume hospitals, while 16 percent were performed at higher-volume hospitals. The researchers note that the ratio of revisions performed to revisions generated was 0.86 for centers with the lowest volume and 1.21 for those with the highest volume.
"These observations will be useful as policy-makers debate the manner in which to obtain the optimal outcomes for patients needing both primary and revision total hip arthroplasty," the authors conclude.
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