Elbow Arthroplasty in Patients with Bleeding Disorders. Preliminary Report of a Single-centre Experience

Abstract

Spontaneous or traumatic hemorrhages into joints that occur in the course of congenital bleeding disorders due to deficiencies of plasma clotting factors lead to early and extensive damage to joints. Arthropathy in those patients most commonly affects the knee, elbow and ankle. Replacement surgery of the damaged joint is the only effective way to treat such advanced changes. Although arthritis of the elbow is quite common, surgery is rarely undertaken; hence relevant reports in the literature are limited to individual or small groups of cases. The paper presents two patients with severe haemophilia A who underwent elbow arthroplasty at the Cracow Center of Rehabilitation and Orthopaedics.