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Smoking 'increases risk of knee replacement failure'
April 13, 2012
Research suggests that smokers should be advised to quit before having a knee replaced.
People who undergo knee replacement surgery are more likely to require revision surgery in the future if they are smokers, a study has found.
US researchers studied data on 621 patients who had a knee replaced, including 131 smokers.
All patients who smoked were advised to give up prior to going under the knife, but the majority did not do so.
The researchers found that ten percent of smokers' knee implants failed, compared with just one percent of non-smokers' procedures.
This means that smoking was associated with a ten-fold increase in the risk of revision surgery for knee replacement.
The researchers observed that tobacco and nicotine are known to increase healing times and may therefore lead to "worse results" for patients undergoing knee replacement surgery.
"Given these results, it is the opinion of the senior authors that all efforts be taken to get patients to stop or minimise any nicotine use prior to total knee arthroplasty," they concluded.
Knee replacement surgery can be obtained on the NHS, but there are often long waiting lists.
For this reason, some patients rely on their private medical insurance or pay for the procedure themselves.
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