The Impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic on US Total Knee and Hip Arthroplasty Procedures in 2020.

BACKGROUND: The coronoavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had profound impact on elective procedures in the United States. We characterized the longer-term decline and recovery of hip and knee arthroplasty procedures following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis of patients undergoing primary and revision total knee and hip arthroplasty (TKA and THA) in the United States between 2014 and 2020 using claims from a large national commercial payer data set contaivning deidentified information from patients with commercial health coverage. We calculated the percentage of cases lost by month using a forecast model to predict TKA and THA volumes in the absence of COVID-19. We then calculated the association between COVID-19 positivity rates and THA/TKA procedures by state and month.

RESULTS: There was a large initial decline in procedures, with primary TKA and THA volumes declining by 93.2% and 87.1% in April 2020, respectively, with revisions seeing more modest declines. Cases quickly recovered with volumes exceeding expected levels in summer months. However, cumulative 2020 volumes remained below expected with 9.7% and 7.5% of expected primary TKA and THA cases lost, respectively. Higher state COVID-19 positivity rates were associated with lower primary TKA, THA, and revision knee procedure rates.

CONCLUSIONS: After the initial decline in March and April, knee and hip arthroplasty cases resumed quickly; however, by the end of 2020, the annual procedure volume had still not recovered fully. The loss in case volume within states was worse in months with higher COVID-19 positivity rates.