Efficacy of postoperative drainage in total knee arthroplasty: Review of the literature

Postoperative drainage after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is an established routine procedure for orthopedic surgeries, and is considered a useful practice in postoperative, but the use of drainage is controversial. Our study aims to clarify this aspect of knee prosthetic surgery. A systematic review of the literature was performed in the electronic databases to investigate the risks and the benefits of wound drainage in total knee arthroplasty: 30 articles were included in our review for eligibility. After the analysis of the literature performed, we found no significant advantages related with the use of wound drain following total knee replacement (TKR) in terms of pain, transfusion rate, blood loss, swelling, postoperative range of motion, wound complications, deep infection and hospital stay, while no drainage means a significant cost saving compared to drainage use. Thus, the use of drainage after TKA cannot be justified on the basis of the results of this study.