Can surgery help you stay in the game?
Demand for joint replacement surgery, once confined largely to patients well past retirement age, has been growing rapidly among a class of people doctors have dubbed the “young actives’’ - those in the 45 to 64 age group who are determined to stay fit.
Still, even with the rise of obesity and longer lives, public health researchers say the rate of joint replacement failures requiring revisions is about 1 percent a year, mostly in the relatively younger patients who “outlive’’ the 10-to-20-year working life spans of their replacement joints. And as technique and technology have improved, the rates of infection, dislocations, and other complications have declined.