Intravenous tranexamic acid for reducing perioperative blood loss during revision hip arthroplasty: A retrospective study

Objective: This study aimed to explore the efficacy and safety of intravenous tranexamic acid (TXA) for reducing perioperative blood loss and allogeneic blood transfusions in revision hip arthroplasty. Methods: TXA was routinely administered as an intravenous preoperative dose in all the revision hip arthroplasty cases in our institution from December 2012. We retrospectively reviewed 803 patients who underwent revision hip arthroplasty from January 2008 to September 2018. These patients were divided into 2 groups based on whether they received intravenous TXA (n=482; 231 men and 251 women; mean age: 63.27 +/- 11.73 years) or not (n=321; 159 men and 162 women; mean age: 63.91 +/- 11.69 years). The 2 groups were compared in terms of estimated intraoperative blood loss, visible blood loss, hidden blood loss, the rate and volume of allogeneic blood transfusions, and the incidence of symptomatic venous thromboembolism. The patients were also compared depending on whether they underwent total hip revision, isolated acetabular revision, or isolated femoral revision. Results: Regardless of the type of revision involved, the patients who received TXA showed significantly lower estimated intraoperative blood loss, visible blood loss, hidden blood loss, and allogeneic blood transfusion rate and volume (all p values were less than 0.001). Use of TXA was not associated with significant changes in the incidence of postoperative symptomatic venous thromboembolism (p=0.911). Similar results were obtained with subgroups of patients who underwent different types of revision surgeries, except hidden blood loss (p=0.994) of patients in the isolated femoral revision subgroup. Conclusion: The administration of intravenous TXA can safely and effectively reduce the perioperative blood loss and allogeneic blood transfusions in revision hip arthroplasty.