Knee Replacement Patients Get Younger

The average age of patients getting artificial knees is dropping, the Mayo Clinic has found.

Researchers said in a news release that the average age of patients dropped from 70 to 68 from 1994 to 2006.

They also found that the surgery is getting more popular, with 800,000 performed from 1990 to 1994 and 2.1 done from 2002 to 2006.

The study found that the percentage of minority patients rose from 8 percent to 9.4 percent.

However, Medicare now pays for a smaller portion of the surgery than it used to, dropping from 72 percent to 61 percent.

"This information will be useful for planning for the future," said Dr. Michele D'Apuzzo of Mayo Clinic. "Total knee replacements aren't going away anytime soon. We're going to be seeing younger patients undergoing this procedure, but we may also see more failures and more revisions, and physicians and medical facilities need to prepare for that."