Follow-Up After Hip and Knee Arthroplasty: a Review of the Literature and a Report on a Pilot Project at the Vreden National Medical Research Center of Traumatology and Orthopedics

Abstract

Background. Today in our country, the follow-up of patients after arthroplasty is carried out in accordance with clinical guidelines, the wording of which is based on monographs from 2006, 2008, and 2014, in addition, clinical guidelines for follow-up do not take into account the results of treatment assessed by the patient himself. The purpose of this study was to examine existing systems and develop a proprietary follow-up system for patients after hip and knee arthroplasty. Results. A review of the literature revealed that follow-up of patients after arthroplasty is an unsolved problem, within which there is low coverage, reluctance or forgetfulness of the asymptomatic patient, the problem of accessibility of medical examinations, and an excessive financial burden on the health care system. Since 2022, fixed recommendations for follow-up after arthroplasty have been used in the clinical practice of our center in discharge epicrisis. Recommendations for the frequency of follow-up were formulated by experts based on a comprehensive review of the literature and their own experience. In the first three months, 221 hip and 235 knee evaluation questionnaires were collected through the proposed mechanism, with a progressive increase in the number of questionnaires based on weekly monitoring data. Conclusion. Unfortunately, the outpatient clinic system is not always able to provide qualitative monitoring of patients after arthroplasty due to various reasons, therefore, in our opinion, the implementation of the mechanism of remote monitoring of patients will allow detecting various complications at the stage of early diagnosis, which will contribute to prompt solution of these problems. The remote monitoring system is also an important source of scientific data.