Gender Differences for Hip and Knee Arthroplasty: Complications and Healthcare Utilization

The influence of patient gender on complications and healthcare utilization remains unexplored. The purpose of the present study was to determine if patient gender significantly affected outcomes following total hip arthroplasty (THA) and total knee arthroplasty (TKA).

Retrospective cohort study of THA and TKA patients was performed using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample from 2002 to 2011. Only patients who underwent elective procedures and those with complete perioperative data were included. Multivariate logistic regression was used to compare the rates of adverse events between male and female cohorts while controlling for baseline characteristics.

A total of 6,123,637 patients were included in the study (31.2% THA and 68.8% TKA). The cohort was 61.1% female. While males had a lower rate of any adverse event (odds ratio [OR] = 0.8, P < .001), urinary tract infection (OR = 0.4, P < .001), deep vein thrombosis/pulmonary embolism (OR = 0.9, P < .001), and blood transfusion (OR = 0.5, P < .001), male gender was associated with statistically significant increases in the rates of death (OR = 1.6, P < .001), acute kidney injury (OR = 1.6, P < .001), cardiac arrest (OR = 1.7, P < .001), myocardial infarction (OR = 1.6, P < .001), pneumonia (OR = 1.1, P < .001), sepsis (OR = 1.6, P < .001), surgical site infection (OR = 1.4, P < .001), and wound dehiscence (OR = 1.4, P < .001).

Males had increased rates of many individual adverse events. Females had higher rates of urinary tract infection, which translated to an overall higher rate of adverse events in females because of the rarity of the other individual adverse events.