Ask the doctor: Does joint replacement surgery cause heart rhythm problems?
Since I am not an expert in joint replacement surgery, I turned to Dr. Thomas S. Thornhill, chair of the department of orthopedic surgery at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital. He said that joint replacement surgery can cause small bits of fat to get into the bloodstream, which can trigger an arrhythmia during the postoperative period but not several months later, and that there is no evidence that orthopedic surgery causes arrhythmias.
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