Residual Pain after Joint Replacement
This post comes from Fred Nelson, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon in the Department of Orthopedics at Henry Ford Hospital and a clinical associate professor at Wayne State Medical School. Some of Dr. Nelson’s tips go out weekly to more than 3,000 members of the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS), and all are distributed to more than 30 orthopaedic residency programs. Those not sent to the ORS are periodically reposted in OrthoBuzz with the permission of Dr. Nelson.
In the absence of infection and aseptic loosening, significant postoperative pain persists in up to 20% of joint-replacement patients. In one study related to this predicament, investigators studied 3 groups of individuals: 1) those without a total joint replacement (TJR) and no self-reported pain, 2) patients with a well-functioning TJR and no self-reported pain (mean implant time of 1.5 years), and 3) patients with a painful TJR (self-reported pain of >8 on a 0 to10 VAS scale; mean implant time of 1.76 years)1.
Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were collected for use in a lymphocyte reactivity assay to detect anti-inflammatory (IL-1ra, IL-10, IL-13 and IL-11) and inflammatory cytokines or receptors (IL-1rII and TNFR1). In general, anti-inflammatory cytokine markers in patients with post-TJR pain were decreased compared to controls and to individuals with no pain following TJR, with IL-10 and IL-13 significantly decreased among painful TJR patients. TNFR1 was significantly elevated in those with painful TJRs, and IL-1rII was modestly elevated. The authors note that treating this “1-2 punch” of elevated proinflammatory cytokines and decreased anti-inflammatory cytokines may require “a complex pattern” of both inhibition of proinflammatory mechanisms as well as anti-inflammatory medications.
In a separate study, investigators used scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to try to determine whether implant corrosion was secondary to inflammatory cellular reactions or to the effects of electrocautery used in near proximity to metallic surfaces2. Twelve knee prostheses taken at necropsy were compared to an off-the-shelf cobalt-chromium knee implant intentionally exposed to Bovie and Aquamantys electrocautery sources. SEM data was collected using an identical method to that of the retrieved implants. Five of the 12 necropsy retrievals showed signs of inflammatory cell-induced corrosion. Compared to the necropsy-retrieved implants, the iron/carbon ratio of the Bovie electrocautery-damaged implant was significantly higher, suggesting that the mechanism by which immune cells corrode implants is different than the mechanism of electrocautery damage.
In a third study, which compared results of lymphocyte transformation testing (LTT) for metal sensitivity with histological and clinical findings in 27 cases of primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA), researchers found that LTT results alone were insufficient for the diagnosis of TKA pain-relief failure due to an immune reaction3. A positive LTT might not indicate that an immune reaction is the cause of pain and stiffness post-TKA.
It will take more research to determine whether there is a connection between surface pitting and chronic knee pain in metal-sensitive persons, whether the elevated macrophage response is an associated risk factor, and whether that is associated with metallic material response.
References
- Lauryn S, Caicedo M, Jacobs J, Hallab NJ. Do TJR Patients with High Self-Reported Pain Levels Exhibit Decreased Serum Anti-inflammatory Cytokine Markers? Abstract 0135 Orthopaedic Research Society 2019
- Sorrels JA, Heise G, Morrow B, Arnholt C, Kurtz S, Mihalko WM. Inflammatory Cell- Induced Corrosion and Electrocautery Damaged TKA Implants. Abstract 0131 Orthopaedic Research Society 2019
- Yang S, Dipane M, Lu CH, Schmalzried TP, McPherson EJ. Lymphocyte Transformation Testing (LTT) in Cases of Pain Following Total Knee Arthroplasty: Little Relationship to Histopathologic Findings and Revision Outcomes. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2019 Feb 6;101(3):257-264. doi: 10.2106/JBJS.18.00134. PMID: 30730485
Benchmark Data on Aseptic Revision after Knee Replacement
The main advantage of joint registries is their large number of recorded procedures, ideally with very few patient “types” not represented in the database. This is the case with the Australian Orthopaedic Association National Joint Replacement Registry, which includes data on almost 100% of all joint replacements performed in Australia since 2002. In the February 20, 2019 issue of The Journal, Jorgenson et al. analyze almost 6,000 major aseptic total knee arthroplasty (TKA) revisions from a cohort of 478,000 primary TKAs registered between 1999 and 2015. This analysis provides robust benchmark data for patients and surgeons, although it comes too late for the 3% of patients who required such a revision surgery within the 15-year study period.
The authors found that fixed bearings were revised for aseptic reasons at a significantly lower rate than mobile bearings (2.7% vs 4.1%, respectively) and that patients <55 years old had an almost 8-fold higher revision rate compared to patients ≥75 years old ( 7.8% versus 1.0%, respectively). The study also found lower aseptic revision rates with minimally stabilized total knee prostheses compared to posterior-stabilized prostheses, and higher aseptic revision rates with completely cementless fixation relative to either hybrid or fully cemented fixation. These are valuable data for arthroplasty surgeons in terms of selecting implants and surgical techniques and for preoperative counseling of patients—especially younger ones. While many of these findings have been previously reported, these registry-based results add significant strength to published data.
Ideally, data such as these would be controlled for confounding variables such as surgeon experience and additional patient-specific variables such as activity demands and medical comorbidities. Still, these data provide useful prosthesis-specific factors for shared decision making with patients. We look forward to more helpful information from this and other national joint registries and encourage the continued growth of similar registries in other subspecialties.
Marc Swiontkowski, MD
JBJS Editor-in-Chief
Persistent Pain after TKA: Can it Be Trained Away?
The anticipation of postoperative pain associated with a large operation such as a total knee arthroplasty (TKA) scares many patients. Some worry to the point of “catastrophizing” pain prior to surgery. As orthopaedic surgeons, we try to assuage our patients’ fears through preoperative education and multimodal pain-management modalities after surgery, but there are still some patients in whom the fear of pain—and the pain itself that inevitably accompanies arthroplasty— negatively affect their outcome. Preparing such patients for surgery and helping them recover afterward despite this high anxiety are big challenges for the orthopaedic care team. Some data suggest that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) might help.
However, a multisite randomized trial by Riddle et al. published in the February 6, 2019 issue of JBJS did not find any differences in pain or function among patients with moderate to high preoperative pain catastrophizing scores who underwent a form of CBT focused on pain coping skills, when their outcomes were compared to those of similar patients in “usual care” or “arthritis education” arms of the study. Each group had similar WOMAC pain scores and pain catastrophizing scores to start, and all patients were found to have significant but very similar decreases in their pain scores at 2, 6, and 12 months postoperatively. Independent assessors determined that the quality of the intervention in the coping-skills and arthritis-education arms was high, suggesting that it was not poor-quality interventions that accounted for the consistent similarities among the 3 groups.
While there are many physiological and psychological factors contributing to an individual’s experience of pain, the results of this study ran surprisingly counter to prior evidence. The authors speculate that differences between the 3 groups may have been masked by the fact that all patients had such a large decrease in pain after the TKA. While that would appear to be good news, we know that there is a stubbornly large subset of patients (cited in this article as 20%) who undergo a technically and radiographically ”successful” knee arthroplasty only to have continued pain without an obvious cause. (See related OrthoBuzz Editor’s Choice post.)
These findings lead me to believe a statement that probably cannot be proven: there are some patients who will experience function-limiting pain no matter what surgery is performed, no matter which drugs are administered, and no matter what rehabilitative therapy is provided. Learning how to identify those patients and clearly communicating expectations to them pre- and postoperatively might help improve their satisfaction with their procedure.
Chad A. Krueger, MD
JBJS Deputy Editor for Social Media
What’s New in Reconstructive Knee Surgery 2019
Every month, JBJS publishes a review of the most pertinent and impactful studies published in the orthopaedic literature during the previous year in one of 13 subspecialties. Click here for a collection of all OrthoBuzz subspecialty summaries. This month, Michael J. Taunton, MD, author of the January 16, 2019 “What’s New in Adult Reconstructive Knee Surgery,” selected the five most compelling findings from among the more than 100 noteworthy studies summarized in the article.
Cementless vs Cemented TKA Fixation
—A matched case-control study of 400 primary total knee arthroplasties (TKAs) found that cementless TKAs had a 0.5% rate of aseptic loosening over a mean follow-up of 2.5 years, while cemented TKAs had an aseptic loosening rate of 2.5%.1
TKA Component Size in Obese Patients
—Among 35 revision-TKA patients with a varus collapse of the tibia, 29 weighed >200 lbs. Fehring et al. found that patients with implants at the small end of the range of the manufacturer’s tibial size offering and with >5° of preoperative varus were at increased risk of tibial-component failure.2
Outpatient TKA
—A retrospective multivariate analysis of >4,300 patients who underwent outpatient TKA and >128,900 patients who underwent inpatient TKA found that, within 1 year, those who had outpatient procedures were more likely to experience a tibial and/or femoral component revision due to a noninfectious cause, irrigation and debridement, explantation of the prosthesis, and stiffness requiring manipulation under anesthesia.
Infection Prevention
—In a randomized trial of patients undergoing TKA, one group received 15 mg/kg of systemic intravenous vancomycin, and a second group received intraosseous regional administration of 500 mg vancomycin into the tibia. Mean tissue concentrations of the antibiotic were 34.4 mg/g in the intraosseous group and 6.1 mg/g in the intravenous group, suggesting that intraosseous administration provides a significantly higher tissue concentration of that antibiotic. 3
TKA Anesthesia Protocol
—A retrospective review of 156 consecutive patients who underwent primary TKA found that procedures performed with mepivacaine spinal anesthesia led to fewer episodes of urinary catheterization and shorter mean length of stay compared with procedures performed with bupivacaine spinal anesthesia.4
References
- Miller AJ, Stimac JD, Smith LS, Feher AW, Yakkanti MR, Malkani AL. Results of cemented vs cementless primary total knee arthroplasty using the same implant design. J Arthroplasty.2018 Apr;33(4):1089-93. Epub 2017 Dec
- Fehring TK, Fehring KA, Anderson LA, Otero JE, Springer BD. Catastrophic varus collapse of the tibia in obese total knee arthroplasty. J Arthroplasty.2017 May;32(5):1625-9. Epub 2017 Jan 30.
- Chin SJ, Moore GA, Zhang M, Clarke HD, Spangehl MJ, Young SW. The AAHKS Clinical Research Award: intraosseous regional prophylaxis provides higher tissue concentrations in high BMI patients in total knee arthroplasty: a randomized trial. J Arthroplasty.2018 Jul;33(7S):S13-8. Epub 2018 Mar 15.
- Mahan MC, Jildeh TR, Tenbrunsel TN, Davis JJ. Mepivacaine spinal anesthesia facilitates rapid recovery in total knee arthroplasty compared to bupivacaine. J Arthroplasty.2018 Jun;33(6):1699-704. Epub 2018 Jan 16.
Bundled Payments for Hip and Knee Replacement: Working as Planned?
When Medicare’s Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) program was implemented in 2016, the health care community—especially orthopaedic surgeons— had 2 major concerns. First, would the program actually demonstrate the ability to decrease the costs of total joint replacements while maintaining the same, or improved, outcomes? Second, would CJR promote the unintended consequence of participating hospitals and surgeons ”cherry picking” lower-risk patients and steering clear of higher-risk (and presumably higher cost) patients? Both of these questions were at the heart of the study by Barnett et al. in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The authors evaluated hip and knee replacements at 75 metropolitan centers that were mandated to participate in the CJR program and compared the costs, complication rates, and patient demographics to similar procedures at 121 control centers that did not participate in CJR. The authors found significantly greater decreases in institutional spending per joint-replacement episode in institutions participating in the CJR compared to those that did not. Most of these savings appeared to come from CJR-participating institutions sending fewer patients to post-acute care facilities after surgery. Furthermore, the authors did not find differences between centers participating in the CJR and control centers in terms of composite complication rate or the percentage of procedures that were performed on high-risk patients.
While this 2-year evaluation does not provide the level of detail necessary to make far-reaching conclusions, it does address two of the biggest concerns related to CJR implementation from a health-systems perspective. There may be individual CJR-participating centers that are not saving Medicare money or that are cherry picking lower-risk patients, but overall the program appears to be doing what it set out to do—successfully motivating participating hospitals and healthcare facilities to look critically at what they can do to decrease the costs of a joint-replacement episode while simultaneously maintaining a high level of patient care. The Trump administration shifted CJR to a partly voluntary model in March 2018, and I hope policymakers consider these findings if further changes to the CJR model are planned.
Chad A. Krueger, MD
JBJS Deputy Editor for Social Media
Full-Thickness Cartilage Defects More Predictive of Future TKA than Joint-Space Narrowing
Many older patients present to orthopaedic surgeons with clinical knee pain suggestive of osteoarthritis (OA) but with little or no radiographic evidence of disease. And a substantial proportion of those patients do not respond adequately to the recommended, first-line nonsurgical treatment approaches to knee OA. A prognostic study by Everhart et al. in the January 2, 2019 issue of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery helps explain why that might be.
The authors evaluated baseline knee radiographs and MRIs from >1,300 older adults (mean age of 61 years) who were enrolled in the Osteoarthritis Initiative, a multicenter observational cohort study with a median of 9 years of follow-up data. They sought to determine independent risk factors for progression to total knee arthroplasty (TKA) among this cohort, all of whom showed Kellgren-Lawrence grade 0 to 3 OA on knee radiographs. MRIs taken at baseline revealed that 38% of those patients had a full-thickness knee-cartilage defect. After the authors adjusted for various confounders (including age, weight, and symptom severity), they found that regardless of radiographic grade, the presence of a full-thickness cartilage defect was a strong independent risk factor for subsequent TKA. Moreover, patients with a defect ≥2 cm2 had twice the risk of arthroplasty compared with patients with defects <2 cm2.
According to the authors, the findings highlight the “greater importance of full-thickness cartilage loss over radiographic OA grade as a determinant of OA severity, specifically regarding the risk of future knee arthroplasty in older adults.” In his commentary on this study, Drew A. Lansdown, MD emphasizes that Everhart et al. “do not advocate for the routine use of MRI in the diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis,” but he says the findings “do suggest that early MRI may have a diagnostic role for patients who are not responding as expected to nonoperative measures.” Noting that the patients in this cohort would probably not be ideal candidates for current cartilage-restoration procedures, Dr. Lansdown encourages further research focused on identifying “patient-specific factors that can match patients with the treatment…that will provide the greatest likelihood of symptom relief and functional improvement.”
Unexplained Pain After TKA? Duloxetine Might Help
Somewhere between 10% and 15% of patients are unsatisfied with their outcome after primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA). In some cases, dissatisfaction is related to poor range of motion, but more often it is related to residual—or even intensified—pain in the knee several weeks after surgery.
In the January 2, 2019 issue of The Journal, Koh et al. report the results of a prospective randomized trial assessing the effects of duloxetine (Cymbalta) in TKA patients who were screened preoperatively for “central sensitization.” In central sensitization, a hyperexcitable central nervous system becomes hypersensitive to stimuli, noxious and otherwise.
Koh et al. randomized 80 centrally sensitized patients (mean age of 69 years), 40 of whom received a multimodal perioperative pain management protocol plus duloxetine, and 40 of whom received the multimodal protocol without duloxetine. During postoperative weeks 2 through 12, patients taking duloxetine reported better results in terms of pain and functional and emotional outcome measures than those not receiving the drug. Patients in the duloxetine group expressed greater satisfaction with pain control (77% vs 29%) and daily activity (83% vs 52%) at postoperative week 12, compared with those in the control group.
This research represents an important advance in identifying and treating patients who are prone to poor outcomes after TKA. The concept of central sensitization is relatively new to the orthopaedic community, and this pharmacologic intervention is likely to be just the first among many that will help these patients. I think it is probable that other, nonpharmacological interventions will eventually be as or even more successful in helping TKA patients with central sensitization. Koh et al. make a valuable contribution in this article by educating us as to the neurophysiologic basis of this condition, and their work should pave the way for more important research in this area.
Marc Swiontkowski, MD
JBJS Editor-in-Chief
Epiphyseal Etiology for Juvenile Osteochondritis Dissecans?
Most patients with clinically apparent juvenile osteochondritis dissecans (JOCD) are between 12 and 19 years of age. Often the disease can be treated successfully with nonoperative modalities, but even in cases where the initial lesion resolves, patients may be predisposed to osteoarthritis later in life. While repetitive microtrauma is suspected to be involved in the development of JOCD, the exact etiology remains poorly understood, even 130 years after the condition was first described.
In the December 19, 2018 issue of The Journal, Toth et al. histologically examined 59 biopsy samples from the central condyles of 26 pediatric cadavers to look for areas of epiphyseal cartilage necrosis. Hypothesizing that such evaluation would reveal some lesions similar to those found in animals, the authors did indeed identify 6 samples with 1 or more areas of necrotic cartilage, which were either incorporated into subchondral bone or associated with focal failure of endochondral ossification. Those characteristics are consistent with a similar disease process called osteochondrosis manifesta seen in pigs and horses. While the clinical significance of these findings remains to be determined, the authors suggest that they may help explain an epiphyseal etiology of JOCD, and the data suggest that these microscopic changes (some of which are rendered in this article as whole-slide images) are probably present in young people 5 to 10 years prior to the clinical manifestations of JOCD.
These findings lend credence to the theory that the underlying etiology of JOCD primarily involves the epiphyseal growth plate rather than subchondral bone. Furthermore, the similarities between these cadaveric specimens and osteochondrosis manifesta lesions in porcine and equine femoral condyles may help us develop improved models to better diagnose, prevent, and treat this pathology.
Chad A. Krueger, MD
JBJS Deputy Editor for Social Media
Extended Oral Antibiotics May Cut PJI Risk When Risk Factors Aren’t Modifiable
Periprosthetic joint infections (PJIs) create a significant burden for patients, surgeons, and healthcare systems. That is why so much research has gone into how best to optimize certain patients preoperatively—such as those with obesity, diabetes, or kidney disease—to decrease the risk of these potentially catastrophic complications. Still, it is not always possible or feasible to optimize every “high-risk” patient who would benefit from a total hip or knee replacement, and therefore many such patients undergo surgery with an increased risk of infection. In such cases, surgeons need additional strategies to decrease PJI risk.
In the December 19, 2018 issue of JBJS, Inabathula et al. investigate whether providing high-risk total joint arthroplasty (TJA) patients with extended postoperative oral antibiotics decreased the risk of PJI within the first 90 days after surgery. In their retrospective cohort study, the authors examined >2,100 total hip and knee replacements performed at a single suburban academic hospital. The patients in 68% of these cases had at least one risk factor for infection. Among those high-risk patients, about half received 7 days of an oral postoperative antibiotic, while the others received only the standard 24 hours of postoperative intravenous (IV) antibiotics.
Relative to those who received IV antibiotics only, those who received extended oral antibiotics experienced an 81% reduction in infection for total knee arthroplasties and a 74% reduction in infection for total hip arthroplasties. I was stunned by such large reductions in infection rates obtained simply by adding an oral antibiotic twice a day for 7 days. Most arthroplasty surgeons go to great lengths to decrease the risk of joint infection by percentages much less than that.
While further investigations are needed and legitimate concerns exist regarding the propagation of antimicrobial-resistant organisms from medical antibiotic misuse, these data are very exciting. I agree with Monti Khatod, MD, who, in his commentary on this study, says that “care pathways that aim to improve modifiable risk factors should not be seen as obsolete based on the findings of this paper.” Furthermore, the study itself is at risk for treatment and selection biases that could greatly influence its outcomes. Nevertheless, getting a successful result in these patients is challenging and, if validated with further data, this research may help surgeons obtain better outcomes when treating high-risk patients in need of hip or knee replacements.
Chad A. Krueger, MD
JBJS Deputy Editor for Social Media
December 2018 Article Exchange with JOSPT
In 2015, JBJS launched an “article exchange” collaboration with the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy (JOSPT) to support multidisciplinary integration, continuity of care, and excellent patient outcomes in orthopaedics and sports medicine.
During the month of December 2018, JBJS and OrthoBuzz readers will have open access to the JOSPT article titled “Perceptions of Rehabilitation and Return to Sport Among High School Athletes With Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: A Qualitative Research Study.”
In this cross-sectional study, researchers looked at 10 high-school-aged individuals who had undergone ACL reconstruction surgery and had not returned to sport. They found that psychosocial barriers to return to sport (e.g., persistent uncertainty about full recovery) were reported with greater consistency than physical barriers. The authors suggest that peer mentoring groups to facilitate psychosocial support during rehabilitation might help.
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