Comparation of the perioperative clinical characteristics during total hip arthroplasty of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis.

Objective: Total hip arthroplasty (THA) has been applied as a successful treatment for repairing the impaired hip joints of patients with advanced inflammatory arthritis. Few studies compared the inpatient clinical characteristics of these patients receiving THA due to inflammatory arthritis. This study aims to compare the perioperative clinical outcome of patients receiving THA due to rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or ankylosing spondylitis (AS).

Methods: We retrospectively included 60 patients receiving THA due to RA or AS, and compared their inpatient clinical characteristics. The collected data comprised baseline data including gender, age, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, Barthel index and clinical outcomes including operative time, perioperative blood loss, perioperative inflammatory indicators, length of hospitalization, inpatient medicine cost and perioperative complications.

Results: AS patients showed increased operative blood loss and autologous transfusion rate than the RA patients. In addition, RA patients showed increased serum level of erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), while no significant difference was found between the two groups in length of hospitalization, medicine cost and perioperative complications.

Conclusion: We suggested that more attention should be paid to the blood loss management of AS patients during perioperative stage, since AS patients were more susceptible to blood loss during THA with the potential reason to remove large amounts of osteophyte.