Short-Term Functional Outcome and Satisfaction Rate of Unicompartmental Knee Arthroplasty in Indian Population: A Retrospective Study

Introduction: Unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) is a procedure used to treat isolated medial or lateral compartmental osteoarthritis of the knee joint. This procedure involves retention of cruciate ligaments which leads to better functional outcome due to preservation of normal kinematics of the knee joint. In the Indian population, due to requirement of squatting and cross leg sitting habits, knee with more range of movement and with good kinematics is a required feature. The study aims to observe the functional outcome, mortality, revision rate, length of hospital stay and satisfaction rate in two-year postoperative patients in a tertiary health care centre. Methods: A total of 17 knees of 15 patients were recruited for the study after applying strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. These patients were operated during the period from March 2015 to March 2018. Ten female patients (67%) and five males (33%) were included. The average age was 61 years. All operations were performed by a single surgeon, with a similar implant from a single company. Similar protocol was used both for surgical technique (minimal invasive) and postoperative rehabilitation for all the patients. Results: The functional outcome in the form of Oxford Knee Score (OKS) and Euro-Quol (EQ-5D) scores improved significantly in all the patients at one year postoperatively, and the improvement remained significant for two years. Satisfaction rate was 91.7% (SD-12.8) at two years. Except for one patient (5.8%), all patients were able to cross leg and squat easily. At the end of two years, the overall survival rate of the implant was found to be 94.1%. Conclusion: The unicondylar arthroplasty provides excellent satisfaction to the appropriately selected patients with good survivorship of implant. It can be a surgery of choice for Indian population as it restores normal kinematics of knee joint and allows the patient to cross leg and squat with a more range of movement.