Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) Pathway for Primary Hip and Knee Arthroplasty

As the world goes into the aging society, the number of total hip and total knee arthroplasty (THA and TKA) will increase fast. It's important to develop strategies to improve the quality of healthcare and get earlier recovery and better outcome for patients undergoing THA and TKA. Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) pathways have been reported to promote faster recovery in some clinical settings, but most of them are retrospective cohort study. We hypothesized that ERAS pathway could provide better recovery than current routine clinical practice for patients undergoing primary THA or TKA. This trial is a prospective, open-labelled, randomized controlled trial that will test, for length of stay (LOS) in hospital, the superiority of ERAS pathway as compared with current clinical practice. A total of 604 patients undergoing primary THA or TKA will be randomized to allocate either ERAS pathway (ERAS group) or conventional care according to different participating center (non-ERAS group). The primary outcome is LOS in hospital. Secondary outcomes include Postoperative LOS, all-cause mortality by 30 days after operation, in-hospital complications, mobilization, postoperative pain evaluation, total in-hospital cost, and readmission rate by 30 days after discharge from the hospital.