Our knee joints slowly wear down as we age, and for some people, the deterioration of the joint gets so bad that they eventually pursue a knee replacement operation. A number of factors can help predict whether or not the replacement operation will be a long-term success, and researchers recently identified one factor that could greatly jeopardize the success of your operation, even in younger patients. That factor was whether or not the knee replacement candidate was a smoker.
We’re all aware that smoking and tobacco use can have negative effects on your health. We’ve heard how smoking is linked to increased cancer and stroke risk, but it can also reduce your likelihood of having a successful surgery. And according to researchers at the University of Missouri, these findings are consistent even in younger patients.
Smoking and Knee Replacement Surgery
To get a better understanding of what was driving the need for a secondary operation after an initial knee replacement surgery, researchers looked at a large subset of knee replacement patients. Interestingly, they found that younger patients were nearly twice as likely to have an early reoperation and revision operation compared to older patients. When you consider that the average person is in better health at age 50 than they are at age 65, researchers were curious to understand why younger knee replacement patients were more likely to have a revision operation. The need for reoperation was often driven by three factors – infection onset, mechanism complications and five-year joint failure.
After looking at health data from 147 patients aged 55 and younger and 276 patients between the ages of 60 and 75 who had all undergone total knee replacement surgery, one thing was clear. While a combination of factors may contribute to the risk of surgery failure, one factor stood out from the rest – tobacco use. Smoking was more common in the younger group, and previous studies have shown that tobacco use has been linked to an increased risk of joint infections and higher rates of wound complications. Moreover, smoking can decrease healthy blood flow to areas of the body, slowing recovery and inhibiting healthy function of a joint.
What’s really interesting is the fact that these findings were consistent when accounting for other potential factors. For example, it stands to reason that a 50-year-old undergoing a knee replacement operation may be living a lifestyle that is harder on their knees. In other words, if both a 50-year-old and a 65-year-old show the same amount of joint degeneration, it would stand to reason that the younger patient may be more likely to be obese or live a more sedentary lifestyle, two factors that contribute to faster knee degeneration. However, researchers stated that when these comorbidities were accounted for, there were no significant differences between older and younger groups, save for tobacco use.
So if a knee replacement operation may be in your future, work hard on controlling what you can control to put yourself in the best position to have a successful surgery. Those factors include working towards an optimal weight, staying active and giving up smoking. For help with any of these factors, or to talk to a specialist about your knee health, reach out to Dr. Botero’s office today.
