Western-designed total knee implants mismatch Saudi patient knees: Anatomical bony measurements documented by computed tomography

OBJECTIVES: To determine the anthropometric features of Saudi knees compared with knees of other ethnicities and reveal mismatches among different knee implant systems. METHODS: All knee computed tomography images obtained between January 2016 and September 2016 for varying medical reasons in a tertiary care hospital in Southwestern Saudi Arabia were retrospectively evaluated. Patients aged <18 years, with trauma or soft tissue or bone tumors were excluded. Eleven parameters were measured for each knee joint. RESULTS: We evaluated 100 knees of 50 Saudi patients (25 men, 25 women) aged 28-85 (mean, 57.3) years. No statistically significant differences were found in age and Sasaki angle measurements between male and female patients. All other parameters were significantly larger in male than female knees. Our measurements were close to those published for Chinese, Thai, and Korean patients; however, published measurements were larger for Caucasian and Indian knees than our measurements. CONCLUSION: The Saudi population has morphological features of knee bone anatomy that do not match with the widely available prostheses designed for Caucasian knees. As several studies of different ethnicities have documented considerable prosthesis mismatch; our study further indicates the need for new implant designs that take these variations into account.