Reinfusion drains after primary total hip and total knee arthroplasty.

The purposes of this study were to evaluate the efficacy of intraoperative surgeon-elected reinfusion drain placement and to determine whether drainage at 90 minutes is useful in predicting the need for a reinfusion drain. In the standard drain hip arthroplasty group, 6 of 30 patients (20%) received a reinfusion, similar to the 11 of 41 patients (27%) in the reinfusion drain group. In the total knee arthroplasty group, 38 of 45 patients (84%) in the standard group had reinfusion, similar to the 23 of 27 patients (85%) in the reinfusion drain group. The surgeon could not predict intraoperatively which patients would need a subsequent reinfusion drain. However, in more than 94% of the cases, one could know by 90 minutes postoperatively whether a reinfusion would be necessary. We believe that a drain that can be converted to a reinfusion drain in the recovery room would be the most cost-effective drain system.