Impact of surgical instrumentation on hospital length of stay and cost of total knee arthroplasty

Background We aimed to analyze the impact of two different types of surgical instrumentation (conventional manual instrumentation (CI) and patient-specific instrumentation (PSI)) on length of stay (LOS) and objectify differences in cost. We hypothesized that there are no differences in the LOS and cost due to the instrumentation system used. Research design and methods LOS was registered using inpatient admission data provided by the Institutional Management Control Department. We recorded the costs associated with each procedure that could be influenced by the use of one system or another during the in-hospital stay. We conducted a prospectively single-center cohort study of 305 TKAs. Surgery was performed with conventional CI in 122 cases and with PSI in 183 cases. Results The mean LOS for the CI group was 4.29 days (SD 1.65) and 4.22 days (SD 1.26), for the PSI group. No significant difference among both instrumentation systems was obtained. When comparing global costs, the mean cost was slightly higher (without a significant difference) for the PSI cases (euro3110.24 vs. euro2852.7 for the CI cases). Conclusions LOS and overall cost, in hospitals with a low annual TKA surgery volume, are unrelated to conventional or patient-specific instrumentation.

Automated summary

The study examined the impact of conventional manual instrumentation and patient-specific instrumentation on length of stay and total cost for TKA surgeries, finding no significant differences in LOS and overall cost between the two instrumentation systems in hospitals with low annual TKA surgery volumes.