Loading...
Clinically evident venous thromboembolism occurs rarely after arthroscopic knee procedures. In this study, researchers used a New York State database to determine the incidence of symptomatic pulmonary embolism (PE) after 418,000 outpatient knee arthroscopies that were performed between 1997 and 2006.
Symptomatic PE was documented in 117 patients during 90 days after knee arthroscopy, resulting in an incidence of 2.8 per 10,000 procedures. In multivariate analysis, independent predictors of PE included older age (odds ratio, 6.5 for age ≥40, compared with age <20), female sex (OR, 1.5), and longer operating time (OR, 3.0 for operating time ≥90 minutes, compared with <30 minutes). Type of surgery (e.g., meniscectomy, ligament reconstruction, …