William Long and colleagues at the Hospital for Specialized Surgery in New York (HSS) analyzed 40-year outcomes of total knee replacements in patients aged 33 and older and concluded that the need for revision surgery during life is unlikely. Eighty-one patients aged 33 to 55 years received 107 Insall-Burstein I or Insall-Burstein II knee replacements (predecessors of modern knee replacements) between 1977 and 1992. The results were presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) and are described in an HSS press release.
Seventy percent of participants did not require surgical revision of their prosthetic joint later in life. The likelihood of death was three to four times higher than the need for revision surgery. Patients' physical activity also significantly increased after the intervention: an average of 1.5 to 2.7 points on the TAS scale. Long noted that most of the causes of surgical revision identified in the study have been eliminated in modern prosthetic models, so even when used at a young age, they are more likely to last a lifetime.
