ABSTRACT

RA patients with knee and hip prosthesis have different clinical and demographic features. Disease duration and comorbidities may be risk factors for prosthetic surgery. Due to the fact that RA patients with prosthesis were older and had more comorbidities, treatment goals may not have been achieved.

Of the RA patients receiving biological therapy, 93 (9%) had knee and/or hip prosthesis. In multivariate analysis, the duration of RA >15 years [odds ratio (OR) 3.73] and the count of comorbidities (OR 1.189) were associated with knee/hip prosthesis. The RA patients with prosthesis had a higher patient global-VAS, patient pain-VAS, DAS28-ESH, HAQ-DI scores, a higher ESH levels, a higher HAQ-DI >1 rates and had a lower DAS28-ESH remission rates in comparison to RA patients without prosthesis. The female gender and obesity ratio were higher in knee prosthesis patients than hip prosthesis patients, but disease activity and functional status evaluations were similar.

A total of 998 RA patients who received biology therapy and were registered in the Hacettepe University Biologic Registry were enrolled in the study. Demographic and clinical features of the patients, comorbidities, and the history of knee and/or hip prosthesis surgery and also total swollen-tender joint counts, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) levels, C-reactive protein levels, disease activity (DAS28-ESR), functional status (HAQ-DI) and patient visual analog scale (VAS) scores for pain, fatigue and global at the last examination were recorded from the files.

The objective of this study was to assess the frequency and the risk factors of the knee and hip prosthesis and to evaluate treatment responses in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients receiving biologic therapy.