Short-term outcomes of outpatient surgery for total knee arthroplasty

INTRODUCTION@#We developed an accelerated clinical pathway involving outpatient surgery for patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty (TKA) who are healthy enough for early discharge.@*METHODS@#Between March 2014 and April 2015, 89 TKAs were performed at a single institution by a single orthopaedic surgeon. 31 patients met the inclusion criteria for the study. All patients received 2 g tranexamic acid and 750 mg cefuroxime sodium intravenously 30 minutes prior to surgery. A multimodal protocol for perioperative pain management was used for all patients.@*RESULTS@#31 patients (three male, 28 female), with a mean age of 67 (range 49-78) years, who underwent TKA were enrolled in this study. The mean length of hospital stay was 28.7 (range 16-49) hours and mean duration of surgery was 92 (range 75-128) minutes. Combined spinal epidural anaesthesia was performed for 23 (74.2%) patients and general anaesthesia was used in 8 (25.8%) patients. Among the 31 patients, 23 (74.2%) patients were discharged within 23 hours of surgery.@*CONCLUSION@#Early discharge of patients following outpatient surgery for TKA was not associated with any procedure-related complications among the selected patients up to three months postoperatively.

Does the Addition of a Dynamic Pedicle Screw to a Fusion Segment Prevent Adjacent Segment Pathology in the Lumbar Spine?

STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective clinical cohort study. PURPOSE: To investigate whether the combined use of dynamic pedicle screws and polyaxial pedicle screws was effective on adjacent segment pathology (ASP). OVERVIEW OF LITERATURE: Various screw and rod models have been recently developed for preventing adjacent segment disease, and hybrid systems have been described along with posterior instrumentation in the fusion segment. In the literature, although the success of dynamic systems has been demonstrated in non-fusion posterior instrumentation, it remains unclear whether the addition of a screw-based dynamic system to a fusion segment would successfully prevent ASP in the long term. METHODS: The study included 101 patients who underwent surgery for degenerative spine diseases between 2007 and 2014 with lumbar stabilization that used either polyaxial pedicle screws alone or polyaxial pedicle screws plus dynamic stabilization screws (with hinged screw heads). These two patient groups were compared using retrospectively obtained postoperative new clinical findings, Oswestry disability index (ODI) scores, visual analog scale (VAS) scores, and radiological data. RESULTS: The proportion of patients with ASP who were radiologically assessed was low (p 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Although the combined use of dynamic screws and the static system was radiologically found to be effective for preventing ASP in patients who underwent lumbar fusion with posterior instrumentation, it did not completely eliminate ASP or result in a significant improvement in clinical ASP.