Operations to replace a knee or a hip appear to increase heart attack risk in the short term and the risk of blood clots in the long term, according to a new study. The heart attack risk falls again over time, but blood clot risk is still elevated years later, the researchers found. The reason for the elevated risks is unclear at this point, said senior author Yuqing Zhang of Boston University School of Medicine. Regardless, he said, the findings suggest that the risk of a heart attack in the weeks after total joint replacement surgery “may have been previously underappreciated,” and ways to prevent this serious complication may need to be considered.
Zhang and colleagues studied roughly 40,000 patients aged 50 or older, all with osteoarthritis. They compared 13,849 patients who underwent total knee replacement to 13,849 closely matched people who did not have surgery. They also…
