The length of time that a knee replacement lasts decreases with each revision, resulting in some patients facing multiple procedures at progressively shorter intervals, UK doctors report.

Their study results should help orthopaedic surgeons and GPs with patient discussions on the likely path for the patient’s prosthetic joint over the remainder of their lifetime, they say.

The analysis, which used data for 2003-2018 from the National Joint Registry of England and Wales — the largest arthroplasty registry in the world — is the first to quantify data for multiple revisions, the authors write in the Lancet Rheumatology.

In a previous meta-analysis, the team had shown that 82% of primary total knee replacements and 72% of primary unicompartmental knee replacements lasted for 25 years or longer.