Patients with severe osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee who undergo knee replacement have a seven-year mortality rate that is half that of those who dont have the procedure. Researchers at Exponent, a medical consulting firm in San Francisco, looked at a 5 percent sample of patients insured by Medicare to identify those with OA of the knee. They divided patients into those who did not undergo total knee arthroplasty (80,629) and those who did (53,829) from 1997 to 2009. They then examined the patients data for up to seven years to compare their health statistics.
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