FRIDAY, Nov. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Patients who undergo total
hip replacement are at greatly increased risk for stroke in the
first few weeks after their surgery, a large new study says.
The findings suggest that elderly people need to weigh the
benefits of hip replacement against the risk of stroke, according
to the researchers.
The investigators compared more than 66,000 people in Denmark
who had total hip replacement to nearly 200,000 people who did not
have the procedure. The average age of the people in the study was
72. Most were white and female.
The hip replacement patients had a 4.4-fold increased risk of
hemorrhagic stroke -- bleeding in the brain -- in the two weeks
after surgery, compared to people in the general population. They
also had a nearly 4.7-fold increased risk of ischemic stroke --
from blocked blood flow to the brain -- during that time, the study
authors found.
The risk of ischemic stroke stayed higher for six weeks after
hip replacement and the risk for hemorrhagic stroke stayed higher
for 12 weeks, according to the study published online Nov. 6 in the
journal
Stroke.
The risk of stroke declined after that time and returned to
normal after one year, according to study lead author Frank de
Vries, an assistant professor of pharmacoepidemiology at Utrecht
University in the Netherlands.
The researchers also found that taking aspirin lowered hip
replacement patients' risk of stroke by as much as 70 percent.
Other medications had no effect.
Each year, about 1 million hip replacements are performed
worldwide, including about 300,000 in the United States. The
researchers said it was important to assess the risk of stroke in
the weeks after hip replacement surgery.
"There is an increasing tendency to decrease the length of hospital stay because of improved therapy and because of strategies to reduce costs and mobilize patients as soon as possible," de Vries said in a journal news release. "It makes sense to evaluate the risk of stroke two weeks after surgery," he concluded.
More information
The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons has more about
total hip replacement.