Risk Factors and Incidence of Venous Thromboembolism after Total Knee Replacement

Patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty can be at risk in developing venous thromboembolism. The etiology of venous thromboembolism after a total knee arthroplasty is multifactorial. The aim of this study is to present the risk factors and the incidence of venous thromboembolism among the 276 patients, who underwent a total of 348 knee arthroplasty treatments in the King Abdulaziz University Hospital. Three hundred (86.2%) patients had undergone unilateral total knee arthroplasty. Only 48 (13.8%) patients had simultaneous bilateral total knee arthroplasty.  Their mean length of stays was 11.02 days. venous thromboembolism was present in eight patients (2.3%), either with symptomatic deep vein thrombosis (1.4%) or with pulmonary embolism (1.1%). One hundred twenty-five (35.9%) patients had diabetes, and six of them had developed venous thromboembolism (P-value: 0.020). The mean post-op mobilization (4.63 ± 3.5 days) was higher in cases with venous thromboembolism (P-value: 0.045). Factors, such as the patients’ age, history of venous thromboembolism, gender, history of cerebrovascular, obesity, operation time, and use of preoperative venous thromboembolism prophylaxis, showed no statistical significance with the incidence of venous thromboembolism in them. The result of our study are comparable to those reported in literature. Diabetes mellitus and delayed postoperative mobilization were the significant risk factors to the incidence of venous thromboembolism.