Medial Opening Wedge High Tibial Osteotomy Fixation with Short Plate without any Graft, Synthetic Material or Spacer

OBJECTIVES: Medial opening-wedge high tibial osteotomy (MOWHTO) is an effective surgical procedure for patients who have medial compartmental osteoarthritis of the knee with varus deformity of the limb. The abnormal load on the medial compartment of the knee relocates to the lateral compartment with this procedure. A gap occurs on the proximal tibia during the correction of varus deformity. Filling this gap with bone grafts or synthetic materials has gained wide acceptance for preventing nonunion or osteotomy site collapse. The aim of this study is to report our results of MOWHTOs performed without any bone graft or any other synthetic materials. METHODS: We evaluated 41 MOWHTOs performed between 2009 and 2012 with no use of bone grafts, synthetic materials or spacers. Age of the patients ranged from 43 to 67. Thirty five of the patients were female and 3 of them were male. The follow-up time was 6 months. RESULTS: There were no any non-unions or loss of correction. The mean bone union time was 12,8 weeks. No major complications were seen. CONCLUSION: The results of our study has shown that achieve satisfactory results can be obtained in MOWHTO without using any bone graft, synthetic materials or spacer.