Prevalence of total joint replacement in the US

Editor's Note

About 7 million Americans are living with a total hip or knee replacement, including 620,000 who have had both, this study finds.

In 2010, the prevalence of total hip and total knee replacement was 0.83% and 1.52%, respectively. Prevalence was higher in women and increased with age, reaching 5.26% for total hip and 10.38% for total knee at 80 years of age.

These estimates correspond to 2.5 million (1.4 million women, 1.1 million men) with total hips and 4.7 million (3.0 million women, 1.7 million men) with total knees.

Secular trends indicate a substantial rise in prevalence over time and a shift to younger patients, which underscores the public health impact of total joints, the authors say.

Background: Descriptive epidemiology of total joint replacement procedures is limited to annual procedure volumes (incidence). The prevalence of the growing number of individuals living with a total hip or total knee replacement is currently unknown. Our objective was to estimate the prevalence of total hip and total knee replacement in the United States.