Unicompartmental Versus Total Knee Arthroplasty in the Same Patient

Unicompartmental Knee Arthroplasty Survivorship is Lower Than TKA Survivorship: A 27-year Finnish Registry Study

“…A UKA offers tempting advantages compared with a TKA, including lower infection rates, preserving bone stock, minimizing invasiveness, and restoring knee kinematics without sacrificing ligaments [11]. However, in our registry and others [23][24][25][26][27], the survivorship of UKAs is poorer than that of TKAs.…”

Use of unicompartmental instead of tricompart-mental prostheses for unicompartmental arthrosis in the knee is a cost-effective alternative: 15,437 primary tricompartmental prostheses were compared with 10,624 primary medial or lateral unicompartmental prostheses

“…The benefit of using UKA has been debated over the years. Some studies have shown very satisfactory results with UKA (Bae et al 1983, Christensen 1991, Scott et al 1991, Heck et al 1993) and some even claim greater patient satisfaction than with TKA (Laurencin et al 1991, Rougraff et al 1991. Others have reported inferior clinical results and a high failure rate (Laskin 1978, Insall and Agletti 1980, Swank et al 1993.…”

St. Georg sledge for medial compartment knee replacement: 461 arthroplasties followed for 4 (1-17) years

“…Two others were revised because of the development of painful arthrosis of the patellofemoral compartment alone. Rougraff et al (1991) and Laurencin et al (1991) compared their experiences with UKA and TKR in properly selected patients and both authors concluded that UKA resulted in a knee that was subjectively "better" with increased range of motion and little or no pain. Therefore replacement of both or all compartments of the knee seems inappropriate for medial arthrosis alone, specially when a reasonably successful alternative to TKR exists.…”

“…Unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) for medial gonarthrosis provides a higher rate of success, fewer complications and superior pain relief better than high tibial osteotomy (Broughton et al 1986, Weale andNewman 1994). Its clinical outcome is also comparable to total knee replacement in selected groups of patients (Laurencin et al 1991, Rougraff et al 1991. Although the overall incidence of revision is slightly higher than for total knee replacement, functional recovery, range of motion and reduced postoperative morbidity are some of the advantages of medial UKA.…”