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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 In the second study, Steven M. Kurtz, vice president of Exponent Inc., an engineering and scientific consulting firm based in Philadelphia, and his colleagues found the dramatic increase in the demand for joint replacements is largely driven by younger patients.
The researchers found that by 2011, more than 50 percent of patients needing hip replacement will be under 65, and that by 2016, more than half of those needing knee replacement will be also be under 65.
Many patients needing knee replacement are between 45 and 54. In 2006, 59,077 people in this age group had knee replacements, but by 2030, that number will increase 17 times to almost 1 million, Kurtz's team found.
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This trend is driven by the success of these procedures as well as by people being more active and also obesity, which can trigger arthritis at an earlier age, Kurtz said. In addition, as the population ages, there will be a need for joint replacement in many more older people, he noted. "You either have a huge increase or a gigantic increase," he said.
Dr. Craig J. Della Valle, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center, in Chicago, said the findings of both studies are "worrisome."
"This mirrors what I am seeing in my own practice," Della Valle said. "The number of patients having these procedures is really increasing rapidly. It seems we are seeing more younger patients. Unfortunately, we are also seeing fewer surgeons who are choosing this as a specialty."
Dr. Hari Parvataneni, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine, said that the average joint replacement lasts 20 years, so as more younger people are having joint replacement surgery, the need for surgery to replace replacements will also grow.
"As the burden of joint replacements increase at a phenomenal rate, the burden of revision procedures increases," Parvataneni said. "Some of these revision procedures will require two to three times the cost of the primary implant, two to three times the clinical time of surgeons, but they only pay 20 percent more," he said. So, there are even fewer surgeons doing complex revisions, he said.
Parvataneni thinks that despite the low reimbursements issue, more surgeons should choose joint replacement. "It's hard to beat this specialty -- you change people's lives, and they are very happy for a long time," he said.
More information
For more on joint replacement, visit the U.S. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.
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