Patients undergoing Joint Arthroplasty received a significant proportion of blood transfusions. In this study, we compared the risk of Deep Infection, and Superficial Infection post operation following Primary Total Hip or Knee replacement in blood-transfused and non-blood-transfused patients.

Cohort of patients who underwent primary total Hip or Knee Arthroplasty from April 2012 to March 2015 in Alberta. Patient characteristics, comorbidity, received blood transfusion were collected from electronic medical records, operating room information systems, discharge abstract database, provincial clinical risk grouper data. Deep Infection and Superficial Infection were captured from Provincial Surgical Site Infection Surveillance data. Deep Infection include deep incisional and organ/space infections. Logistic regression analysis were used to compare Deep Infection and Superficial Infection in blood-transfused and non-blood-transfused cohorts, and risk-adjusted for age, gender, procedure type, and co-morbidities.

Our study cohort contains 27891 patients, with mean of age at admission was 66.3±10.4, 57.5% female, 49.3% had 1 or more comorbidities. 58.8% underwent Knee Replacement. 11.1% received blood transfusion during hospital stay (Total Hip Replacement (THR) =13.1% and Total Knee Replacement (TKR) =9.7%,). 1.1% had Deep Infection (THR=1.4% and TKR=0.9%) and 0.5% had Superficial Infection (THR=0.5% and TKR=0.5%). Blood-transfused patients got 1.7% Deep Infection and 1.0% Superficial infection. Non-blood-transfused patients got 1.0% Deep Infection and 0.5% Superficial infection. Controlling for age, gender, procedure type, and co-morbidities, the odds of Deep Infection were 1.6 times higher for blood-transfused patients than for non-blood-transfused patients (adjusted odds ratio [OR]=1.6, 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.2–2.2], p=0.004). The odds of Superficial Infection were 2.0 times higher for transfused patients (adjusted OR=2.0, 95% CI [1.3–3.0], p=0.002).

Blood transfusion increases Deep Infection and Superficial Infection post-surgery following Primary Total Knee or Hip Replacement. This finding suggests to reduce the unnecessary blood transfusion for patients considering Joint Arthroplasty. Reducing the blood transfusion will save the inpatient cost and decrease the infective complications post-surgery in Hip or Knee Arthroplasty patients.