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25-05-2017 | Osteoarthritis | News

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Surgical interventions for OA may be cost-effective

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medwireNews: Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and total hip arthroplasty (THA) are cost-effective interventions for the treatment of osteoarthritis (OA), results of a systematic review suggest.

Raymond Oppong (University of Birmingham, UK) and co-authors analyzed data from 23 studies – six observational, 16 model-based, and one with an unknown design – that evaluated surgical interventions for knee and hip OA. Overall, they found that TKA and THA were cost-effective and associated with improvements in quality of life.

However, “this depended on the population that was considered and the interventions that they were compared to,” say the researchers, noting that the procedures were cost-effective for severe knee and hip OA regardless of age and when compared with nonoperative treatments, but delayed THA was not cost-effective compared with early primary THA or TKA.

Although “[i]t may be argued that avoiding or delaying these surgical procedures may have a positive impact on health budgets through savings,” this “may have a detrimental effect on the quality of life of patients and may lead to additional costs down the line,” write Oppong and colleagues in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders.

And they conclude that OA treatment guidelines should “include suggestions for the use of surgical interventions as well as other forms of treatments and management techniques.”

By Claire Barnard

medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2017 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature group

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