Impact of biologic therapies on need for hip and knee replacement among rheumatoid arthritis and non-rheumatoid arthritis patients in Ontario, Canada: An interrupted time-series analysis
Hawley SJ., Ling V., Edwards CJ., Arden NK., Cooper C., Judge A., Paterson MJ., Hawker G., Prieto-Alhambra D.
Rates of orthopaedic surgery among rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients have been decreasing in several developed countries. One explanatory factor could be the introduction of biologic therapies. Whilst we recently tested this hypothesis using UK data, analyses that account for concurrent trends in non-RA patients is lacking. Our aim here was to estimate the impact of approval of tumour necrosis factor inhibitor therapy (TNFi) for RA on the need for total hip (THR) and total knee replacement (TKR) among incident RA patients in Ontario, Canada, whilst accounting for any concurrent rate changes among non-RA patients.