The Impact of Anesthetic Choice on Outcome After Total Hip and Total Knee Replacement Surgery

Total knee and hip replacements are commonly performed procedures, increasing in frequency. Perioperative complications, although rare, can impair patient recovery. Anesthetic choice has been speculated to impact complications. Based on this literature, it is evident that neuraxial anesthesia and specifically spinal anesthesia offers benefits when chosen as the anesthetic technique. These advantages include better postoperative pain control, reduced postoperative nausea and vomiting, and shortened hospital length of stay. Other outcomes such as incidence of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, frequency of postoperative delirium, perioperative blood loss, and 30-day mortality appear not to be impacted by the choice of anesthetic technique.