Researchers, whose findings appeared in the journal Arthritis
Care & Research, analyzed the medical records of nearly 1,000
knee-replacement surgery patients, and found that 30 percent of
them gained five percent or more of their body weight in the
five years following surgery. One possible explanation for the
counter-intuitive results, experts said, is that if people have
spent years adapting to knee pain by taking it easy, they don't
automatically change their habits when the pain is reduced.
"Patients who undergo knee arthroplasty are at increased risk of
clinically important weight gain following surgery," wrote study
leader Daniel Riddle, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth
University. "Future research should develop weight
loss/maintenance interventions particularly for younger patients
who have lost a substantial amount of weight prior to surgery,
as they are most at risk for substantial post surgical weight
gain." Riddle's group used a patient registry from the Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, wh