Geoffrey Westrich, MD

Cementless knee replacement, an alternative to traditional cemented knee replacement surgery, is gaining interest in the field of orthopedic surgery. We launched a study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) to compare outcomes of a modern cementless knee implant to the standard knee implant that requires bone cement for fixation.  Our study found no difference in hospital length of stay, complications, hospital readmission within 90 days of surgery, or rates of revision surgery at two-year patient follow-up. We presented our research at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2022 Annual Meeting in Chicago.  With respect to time spent in the operating room (OR), using the cementless implant reduced OR time by 25%, saving an average of 27 minutes. In a cementless total knee replacement, you do not have to wait for the cement to harden and dry like you do in a cemented knee replacement, which saves time.  Reduced time in the OR under anesthesia is advantageous to pati...

Outpatient hip and knee replacements are on the rise. Yes, increasing numbers of patients are going home the same day they have joint replacement surgery. We launched a study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) to see if patients who went home the same day did as well as those who spent one or more nights in the hospital. Analyzing information from a large database that included patients nationwide, we found no significant difference in complication rates for outpatient hip replacement. For knee replacement, we found slightly higher odds of complications in patients who left the hospital on the day they had surgery. Overall, though, complications were not common in either knee replacement group, with an incidence of less than 1%. The study appeared online in The Journal of Arthroplasty . For our study, we were able to identify almost 1.8 million patients who underwent an elective total hip or total knee replacement between 2010 and 2017. We found that the annual rate of outpatien...