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Article: The effect of hospital volume on the in-hospital complications rate in knee replacement patients.
- Article from:
- Health Services Research
- Article date:
- December 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Health Research and Educational Trust. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Knee replacement has become one of the most common inpatient surgical procedures among the elderly, with nearly 80,000 performed on Medicare patients in 1990 (Coyte et al. 1995). The number of knee replacements in 1990 was almost double those performed in 1985. The large number of knee replacements leads to the question of what factors influence a good outcome. Recent studies by the Total Knee Replacement Patient Outcomes Research Team (TKR PORT) have focused on outcomes defined as improvements in function and pain relief (Callahan et al. 1994; Hawker, Bombardier, Freund, et al. 1993); prosthesis failure (Callahan et al. 1994; Heck, Melfi, Mamlin, et al. 1997); selected ...