Michael A. Mont, MD, Kyle Low, MD, Dawn M. LaPorte, MD, Emmanuel Hostin, MD, Lynne C. Jones, PhD, David S. Hungerford, MD
Reinfusion Drains After Primary Total Hip and Total Knee Arthroplasty
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ABSTRACT: The purposes of this study were to evaluate the efficacy of intraoperative surgeon-elected reinfusion drain placement and to determine whether drainage at 90 minutes is useful in predicting the need for a reinfusion drain. In the standard drain hip arthroplasty group, 6 of 30 patients (20%) received a reinfusion, similar to the 11 of 41 patients (27%) in the reinfusion drain group. In the total knee arthroplasty group, 38 of 45 patients (84%) in the standard group had reinfusion, similar to the 23 of 27 patients (85%) in the reinfusion drain group. The
surgeon could not predict intraoperatively which patients would need a subsequent reinfusion drain. However, in more than 94% of the cases, one could know by 90 minutes postoperatively whether a reinfusion would be necessary. We believe that a drain that can be converted to a reinfusion drain in the recovery room would be the most cost-effective drain system.