One prospective study covers patients that undergo unicompartmental arthroplasty from 2000-2005 : nineteen patients underwent lateral unicompartmental (uni) knee replacements, with an average age of 68 years for the lateral unicompartmental group.
Assessments included preoperative and postoperative range of motion, subjective testing, radiographic evaluation and MRI.
Only one patient was converted to a total knee arthroplasty, and none were lost to follow-up.
Successful outcomes are reported in the majority of cases over an average follow-up of 33 months…
Physical examination and subjective questioning along with MRI correlation would help predict successful outcomes.
Overall, patients reported a return to skiing in 5 months, tennis in 4 months and walking and jogging within 1 to 2 months.
He also reports that long-term results have to be followed and adds that the procedure has shown it is worth consideration.
“You can preserve bone stock, you can get near-normal kinematics, you have low cost and blood loss during surgery is less,” he says.
Reference
Plancher KD, Bishai SK, Ibrahim T. Patients undergoing lateral unicondylar knee arthroplasty: Can we guarantee success and return to sport? Paper SS-38. Presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Arthroscopy Association of North America. May 20-23, 2010. Hollywood, Fla.
