Value of long-term systematic follow-up for complication detection after hip and knee arthroplasty: a 17-year retrospective cohort study.

Authors

Antoine Arsenault, Nathan Riel, Alex Tardif, Sonia Bédard, Annie Deshaies

Published in

Canadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgie. Volume 69. Issue 5. Pages E408-E413. Epub Sep 29, 2026.

Abstract

Long-term systematic follow-up after arthroplasty is widely practised; however, little to no evidence shows benefit from long-term surveillance in asymptomatic patients. The objective of this study was to assess the utility of long-term systematic follow-up in detecting arthroplasty complications requiring surgical intervention.
We conducted a single-centre retrospective cohort study of patients who underwent revision surgery between 2003 and 2020 for complications occurring more than 12 months after primary total hip, total knee, or unicompartmental knee arthroplasty. We identified patients using institutional records. We classified complications based on whether they were first detected during systematic (scheduled) or nonsystematic (unscheduled or symptom-driven) follow-up. The primary outcome was the number of complications detected in each group. Secondary outcomes included time to complication detection and the number of symptomatic versus asymptomatic complications. We compared groups using Student t tests, Mann-Whitney U tests and χ² tests.
Among 633 revision surgeries, 74 met inclusion criteria. Of these, 52 (70.3%) complications were detected during nonsystematic follow-up. Since 2003, only 2 (2.7%) complications presented as asymptomatic. Median time to detection was slightly shorter with systematic follow-up (39.0 v. 53.5 mo, p = 0.45).
Long-term systematic follow-up has limited effectiveness in detecting complications requiring revision surgery. In light of these findings, and consistent with recent studies reporting similar results, there is a pressing need to develop alternative follow-up strategies that will both improve quality of care and reduce the burden of current follow-up strategies.

PMID:
42810740
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 30 Sep 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.