Impact of major postoperative complications on employment and earnings after elective hip or knee replacement...

Postoperative complications can steer patients away from a typical surgical recovery trajectory and hinder their ability to work and earn income. We aimed to quantify these effects for working-aged adults after elective joint replacement surgery.

We conducted a population-based cohort study of adults aged 30-63 yr having elective hip or knee arthroplasty using the Canadian Hospitalization and Taxation Database from 2004 to 2019. Our primary exposure was a postoperative complication, defined as a composite of adverse medical events, intensive care unit visit, or rehospitalization within thirty days. Our coprimary outcomes were employment and earnings in the second calendar year after surgery. We matched patients with complications 1:1 to those without complications using a propensity score considering demographic, medical, and financial characteristics. We used probit regression to assess employment after surgery and difference-in-difference ordinary least squares regression for the change in earnings from before to after surgery.

We included 222,087 adults undergoing an elective hip or knee replacement. In total, 6.3% experienced postoperative complications. In the second year after surgery, 55.1% of patients with complications were working compared with 57.3% of patients without complications (-2.2 percentage points [pp], 95% confidence interval [CI], -3.5 to -1.0). Patients with complications had a CAD 1,782 greater decline in annual earnings from before surgery (95% CI, -2,775 to -789; values inflated to 2023 Canadian dollars) than patients without complications.

Postoperative complications resulted in a lower likelihood of employment and lower earnings after elective hip or knee replacement surgery. This may also have broader economic implications.