Comparison of Frequency and Morbidity of Unilateral Total Knee Replacement Versus Simultaneous Bilateral Total Knee Replacement

Introduction Total knee replacement (TKR) is a procedure that is often performed on patients who have advanced osteoarthritis and has become more common. Bilateral TKR can be done at the same time and can save time, anesthesia and cost of multiple procedures. Objective To determine the frequency of unilateral and simultaneous bilateral total knee replacement and then compare their outcomes. Methods A total of 95 patients were included and were divided into two groups, i.e., patients undergoing unilateral TKR were grouped as group A and patients undergoing bilateral TKR were grouped as group B. Then patients underwent surgery under general anesthesia. All patients were followed up in the outpatient department (OPD). During follow-up, patients were evaluated for the outcome, i.e., cardiac event, urinary tract infection and surgical site infection. All this information was recorded on proforma while analyzed in SPSS v. 22 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). The outcome was compared in both groups by using chi-square test. The P-value ≤ 0.05 was considered as significant. Results The mean age of patients was 63.00 ± 6.17 years. There were 50 (52.6%) males and 45 (47.4%) females. The mean BMI of females was 27.93 ± 2.43 kg/m(2). There were 47 (49.5%) patients who underwent simultaneous bilateral surgery while 48 (50.5%) underwent unilateral surgery. It has been observed that after surgery, the cardiac event occurred in one (1.1%) case and that case was from unilateral surgery group; urinary tract infection occurred in four cases, two (4.3%) were from bilateral cases while two (4.2%) were from the unilateral group and surgical site infection occurred in four cases, two (4.3%) were from bilateral cases while two (4.2%) were from the unilateral group. The difference was insignificant in both groups (p>0.05). Conclusion Thus, there was no significant difference observed between both groups regarding complications after surgery.