Published in
N°005 - March / April 2020
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Preoperative considerations and how I perform a fixed bearing Lateral Unicompartmental Knee Arthroplasty
By Anders Troelsen in category
Hôpital Universitaire de Hvidovre, Copenhague - Danemark
Background
Unicompartmental treatment of knee osteoarthritis (OA) has been available to surgeons for decades. However, on nationwide scales, as reported by arthroplasty registries, the utilization rates of lateral unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (LUKA) have historically been low. For the vast majority of surgeons, TKA has been the choice of treatment for lateral OA. In correctly selected patients, LUKA offers the advantages of unicompartmental treatment in general, as it is cartilage and cruciate sparing. This allows ligaments with natural laxity / tension to guide the kinematics of the arthroplasty treated knee joint. These unique features of unicompartmental knee arthroplasty correlates with the great improvements in knee function and low knee awareness observed by patients.
When LUKA is performed in correctly selected patients and by trained surgeons there are reports of excellent short and long term follow-up for cases with primary OA and posttraumatic OA (1,2).
Frequency of lateral OA
Population based numbers estimate that approximately 10 % of knee OA is developed based in the lateral compartment. The specific rate of symptomatic patients requiring realigning procedures or knee arthroplasty surgery is unknown. In my practice I perform 12 % of primary knee...
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