News & Announcements

As of March 2024, the American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) surpassed 4 million hip and knee arthroplasty procedures in its database, a milestone AJRR announced in the recently released 11th edition of its Annual Report.

The 2024 report analyzes more than 3.7 million of these procedures and reflects data submitted between 2012 and 2023 from 1447 institutions across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This marks an 18% growth in procedures from the previous year.

“Surpassing 4 million captured hip and knee arthroplasty procedures solidifies AJRR’s status as the largest orthopaedic registry by annual procedure count,” said James I. Huddleston, III, MD, chair of the AJRR Steering Committee.

“This achievement reflects our collective commitment to improving patient care and gathering data that can influence the quality and effectiveness of treatments across the nation. The success of the AJRR wouldn’t be possible without the support and contributions of our participating sites, surgeons and industry partners.”

With the collection and reporting of hip and knee arthroplasty data in the US, the report aims to provide valuable information to the musculoskeletal community. Its analyses can drive clinicians to alter practice and improve patient outcomes.

Some notable findings in the 2024 Annual Report include:

• AJRR continues to facilitate the capture of patient-report outcomes (PRO) data. AJRR updated its PRO data collection portal and the procedure and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) file upload specifications in February 2024 to support data capture and reporting on behalf of sites for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) PRO Performance Measure (PRO-PM). By the end of 2023, 631 of 1447 sites (44%) have submitted PROMs, which is a 27% year-over-year increase.
• Across all PROMs, there is a substantial improvement in PROs from preoperative to 1-year postoperative, especially in physical function and knee-related outcomes. PROMs related to physical health, such as HOOS JR and VR-12 Physical Health Component, indicate greater improvements compared with mental health metrics, emphasizing the positive impact of knee arthroplasty on patients’ physical function.
• Ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) continue to play an increasingly important role in the delivery of total joint arthroplasty in the US. There are now 62,110 procedural cases reported by ASCs, a 70% increase since 2022.
• Hospital discharges to home versus a skilled nursing facility maintain an upwards trend. Approximately 92% of patients are now being discharged to home following elective primary total hip arthroplasty (THA), with far fewer patients being discharged to skilled nursing facilities than just a few years ago. The percentage of patients discharged to a skilled nursing facility following revision THA declined over the last 4 years to less than a quarter of revision hip arthroplasty patients. These data demonstrate an ongoing commitment to transitioning patients safely back to their home environment, as well as patient preoperative optimization and care coordination.
• The utilization of both computer navigation and robotics has increased substantially over the past few years. The percentage of elective primary THA cases utilizing robotic assistance is now more than 6%. However, in 2023, there has been a decline in computer-assisted navigation.

“It’s clear that the AJRR is shaping the future of orthopaedic care by empowering surgeons with on-demand dashboards that deliver comprehensive data analytics,” Dr. Huddleston said.

“This growing national registry will continue to drive evidence-based decisions and advance patient outcomes for years to come.”

Click here to download the full AJRR Annual Report.