Clues from a blood sample can predict how quickly patients who have had hip-replacement surgery will make a full recovery, according to a new study.
Researchers hope the blood test will provide insights into things patients can do before and after surgery, such as adhering to a special diet or exercise routine, that may help them regain full mobility.
But these surveys are subjective, says Nima Aghaeepour, an assistant professor of anesthesiology, perioperative, and pain medicine at Stanford University, and it requires a lot of guesswork to interpret the responses.
Smartwatches and Blood Tests
In their search for a molecular harbinger of surgical recovery, the team enrolled 49 hip-replacement patients, ages 57-68, and asked each to don an activity-tracking smartwatch before and after their procedures.Before the surgery, each patient also underwent a blood draw, which the researchers analyzed using techniques that parsed cell subtypes, as well as the cells’ activity.
Using the smartwatch data and information from the pre-surgery blood draw, the team devised an algorithm that could accurately predict how swiftly patients would get back on their feet. Overall, those whose blood tests showed the strongest immune function prior to surgery recovered 34% faster than those with weaker immune function.
Beyond Hip Replacements
While the study’s data is preliminary and applies only to hip replacement surgeries in people around age 60, the researchers suspect that the findings will generally apply to patients of various ages undergoing different procedures.“My expectation is that there will still be a strong connection between the immune system and recovery, but exactly what that connection will be is still to be determined,” Aghaeepour says. The researchers plan to investigate other patient populations with the same blood test and smartwatch approach.
The National Institutes of Health, la Fondation des Gueules Cassées, and the Philippe Foundation funded the work.