Exact Association Between Preoperative Blood Viscosity and Postoperative Deep Venous Thrombosis Risk in Knee Osteoarthritis Patients: A 10-Year Retrospective Study

Several lines of evidence have suggested a sustainable relationship between blood viscosity (BV) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT). But there was a lack of data on the association of preoperative BV and postoperative acute DVT. For patients who accepted total knee arthroplasty (TKA) caused by primary knee osteoarthritis (KOA), this study tried to investigate whether preoperative BV relevant parameters might affect DVT risk following TKA. We reviewed a total of 750 consecutive KOA patients treated by unilateral TKA in our hospital from March 2010 to May 2020. All patients undergoing TKA were routinely examined by the color Doppler ultrasound on the third postoperative day and were assigned into DVT and non-DVT groups. Statistical comparisons of BV relevant parameters which mainly including whole BV (low, midst, and high shear rates), plasma viscosity, whole blood reductive viscosity (BRV; low, midst, and high shear rates) were made comprehensively. It could be found that low whole BRV (low shear rate) before TKA was significantly related to postoperative DVT risk in all patients, especially in female patients after stratifying by gender (p < .05). Our results implied that low whole BRV might be a remarkable risk factor of DVT in primary KOA patients after TKA. Timely and effective DVT prophylaxis for these patients is much required.