Pulmonary embolism. Incidence in primary cemented and uncemented total hip arthroplasty using low-dose sodium warfarin prophylaxis.

Abstract

During a 5 1/2-year period from January 1984 to July 1989, 736 patients between the ages of 50 and 75 with a diagnosis of osteoarthritis had either cemented or uncemented primary total hip arthroplasty. Patients were treated with low-dose sodium warfarin for prophylaxis against pulmonary embolism and had preoperative and postoperative serial lung scanning. The overall incidence of pulmonary embolism was not statistically different between the cemented and uncemented groups (3.87% and 6.19%, respectively; P > .05). Eighty-one percent of the pulmonary emboli were asymptomatic. The incidence of pulmonary embolism was higher in men than in women (7.3% and 2.93%, respectively; P < .05) but did not differ within each individual sex for the cemented and uncemented groups. Of greater significance, when the two initial groups were matched to control for sex and weight differences (564 patients), the incidence of pulmonary embolism narrowed to 4.3% and 5.3% in the cemented and uncemented groups, respectively (P > .55). These data indicate that the use of uncemented total hip arthroplasty does not offer any additional protective value against pulmonary embolism when using low-dose sodium warfarin prophylaxis.