Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Dec 18, 2018; 9(12): 285-291
Published online Dec 18, 2018. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v9.i12.285
Socio-demographic factors impact time to discharge following total knee arthroplasty
Ugonna N Ihekweazu, Garrett H Sohn, Mitzi S Laughlin, Robin N Goytia, Vasilios Mathews, Gregory W Stocks, Anay R Patel, Mark R Brinker
Ugonna N Ihekweazu, Robin N Goytia, Vasilios Mathews, Gregory W Stocks, Anay R Patel, Mark R Brinker, Fondren Orthopedic Group, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Ugonna N Ihekweazu, Mitzi S Laughlin, Robin N Goytia, Vasilios Mathews, Gregory W Stocks, Anay R Patel, Mark R Brinker, Fondren Orthopedic Research Institute, Fondren Orthopedic Group, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Garrett H Sohn, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Author contributions: Ihekweazu UN, Goytia RN, Mathews V, Stocks GW, Patel AR and Brinker MR contributed to the study conception and design; Ihekweazu UN, Goytia RN, Mathews V, Stocks GW and Patel AR contributed to the data acquisition and data interpretation; Laughlin MS contributed the data analysis, data interpretation and preparation of the tables and figures; Ihekweazu UN, Sohn GH and Laughlin MS contributed to the literature review and the writing of the article; all authors have approved this manuscript prior to submission and believe that this manuscript represents honest work.
Institutional review board statement: This study was evaluated and an IRB exemption was given for this work by the Texas Orthopedic Hospital’s IRB (TOH203e).
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data and the study was given an IRB exemption.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflicts-of-interest related to this article but the following authors have financial relationships to report in general: Robin Goytia reports personal fees from Innomed, outside the submitted work; Gregory Stocks reports stock ownership from Nimbic Systems, Inc., outside the submitted work; Mark Brinker reports personal fees from Zimmer Biomet, outside the submitted work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author to: Mitzi S Laughlin, PhD, Senior Researcher, Chief Scientist, Fondren Orthopedic Research Institute, Fondren Orthopedic Group, 7401 S. Main, Houston, TX 77030, United States. mitzi.laughlin@fondren.com
Telephone: +1-713-7943408
Received: October 4, 2018
Peer-review started: October 4, 2018
First decision: October 29, 2018
Revised: November 6, 2018
Accepted: December 10, 2018
Article in press: December 10, 2018
Published online: December 18, 2018
Core Tip

Core tip: In an effort to decrease post-operative length of stay (LOS), many institutions continue to develop optimal discharge pathways. Since LOS is dependent upon many variables, we sought to define which socio-demographic factors influence LOS in total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Six factors were found to increase LOS: Age, gender, Black or African American race, simultaneous bilateral TKA, later procedure end times and number of PRA. Two factors decreased LOS, patient being married and surgery during a major public holiday week. While none of the patient specific factors are modifiable by the clinician, we do have the ability to optimize surgical schedule and allocation of resources.