ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Elevated high-sensitive cardiac troponin T (cTnT) is a well-known biomarker to predict cardiac events following non-cardiac surgery. However, further information regarding high-sensitive cTnT in orthopedic surgery, especially total knee arthroplasty (TKA), is not present yet. This study aims to gain further insight into the predictive value of high-sensitive cTnT in adverse cardiac events in patients accepting TKA. METHODS: We performed a prospective study in our hospital with the aim to enrolling 789 consecutive patients. Included patients who underwent TKA had mean ages of 65 years, and 64.9% were female. High-sensitive cTnT measurements were performed for study purposes before operation and on 1st postoperative days respectively. Postoperative cardiac events (POCE) 2 months and 2 years postoperatively were used to be evaluated for present study and defined short-term and long-term POCE respectively. The cut-off value of high-sensitive cTnT predicting patients at increased risks of POCE was evaluated by the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. RESULTS: Mean preoperative, postoperative cTnT and difference value between preoperative and postoperative cTnT (D-cTnT) were 20, 32, 12 ng/L respectively. 2-month and 2-year cardiac event rate following TKA were 2.3% and 3.4%. Using difference value between preoperative and postoperative cTnT (D-cTnT) to predict short-term cardiac events, the best cut-off was 23 ng litre-1, with an AUC of 0.84 (95% CI: 0.79-0.89, p < 0.001), which was better in comparison to preoperative and postoperative cTnT. In contrast, using preoperative cTnT to predict long-term cardiac events, the best cut-off was 25 ng litre-1 with an AUC of 0.78 (95% CI: 0.73-0.83, p < 0.001), which was better in comparison to postoperative and D-cTnT. CONCLUSIONS: D-cTnT best predicted short-term POCE in comparison to preoperative and postoperative cTnT, while preoperative cTnT level best predicted long-term POCE in comparison to postoperative cTnT and D-cTnT.
