PREDICTORS OF LENGTH OF STAY FOLLOWING TOTAL HIP REPLACEMENT: A MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF 2302 PATIENTS

Introduction: Increasingly, clinical pathways and fast-track protocols are reducing hospital in-patient stay following elective joint replacement surgery. In order to improve efficiency in our unit, we undertook a prospective observational study to identify pre–and peri-operative factors associated with increased length of stay. Methods: From our prospective primary hip arthroplasty database we analysed data from 2678 consecutive patients over a 9-year period from 1998–2007. Patients were excluded who had bilateral hip replacement, died within 30 post-operative days, or had surgery for a diagnosis other than primary osteoarthritis. This left 2302 patients who were analysed using multiple logistic regression analysis Results: Length of stay varied from 3 to 58 days, with a mean of 8.1 days, and median 7 days. After multivariate analysis, factors that were found to be significantly associated with shorter length of stay were younger age (p Conclusions: We have identified a number of pre-operative factors that predict likely length of stay in a large cohort of patients undergoing primary hip replacement. This data could be used in the future for resource allocation and to improve efficiency in this significant area of healthcare.