Background: The advent of international medical travel has resulted in many patients travelling abroad to seek medical attention at foreign institutions. However, it is not known whether long-haul flights further increase the risk of VTE in patients who are to receive a joint replacement.
Objectives: We performed this retrospective cohort study to analyze if patients with preoperative air travel with a flight time more than four hours are at higher risk for VTE development following total knee or total hip athroplasty (THA) compared to patients without preoperative travel.
Methods: Between January 2007 and December 2012, 245 patients were treated with either a primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA) or total hip arthroplasty (THA) with preoperative air travel with a flight time more than 4 hours at our institution. One-hundred fifty five patients (n= 87 THA and n= 68 TKA) out of 245 patients met the inclusion and exclusion criteria and were included in this study. A total of 187 patients (n= 92 THA and n= 95 TKA) without bus, air or car travel longer than 30 minutes met the inclusion and exclusion criteria and were included in this study as controls.
Results: Patients with preoperative air travel were not at higher risk for VTE development compared to patients without preoperative air travel following TKA (HR = 0.95; 95%CI = 0.14-6.52). Gender (HR = 0.41; 95%CI = 0.05-3.56) and age (HR = 3.77; 95%CI = 0.63-22.37) did not influence the VTE development in TKA patients.
Conclusions: Our study results show that preoperative air travel do not further increase the risk of VTE after TKA and THA.
Keywords: Deep vein thrombosis; air travel; long-haul flight; total hip arthroplasty; total knee arthroplasty.