Gender Specific Knee Replacement -Do Indian Females Need It
RC18-RC20
Correspondence
Dr. Karthick Anand,
A2 Harmony Appartment, Avvai Street, Gorimedu-605006, Puducherry, India.
E-mail: karthick13985@gmail.com
Introduction: Total knee replacement is a revolutionary procedure aimed at relieving pain improving knee function and the quality of life, Indian women are more prone for osteoarthritis and recent researches have led on to manufacturing implants specific to their anatomy to achieve the above mentioned goals.
Aim: The study aimed at analysing whether these modifications in the newly designed gender specific implants translate to any additional significant improvement in functional outcome in comparison to the commonly used traditional knee implants.
Materials and Methods: It was a prospective comparative study done in 30 knees of 30 women patients aged between 55-70 years in GV Hospital, Trichy, India between July 2011- January 2013. A total of 15 patients (Group B) had Zimmer Legacy Posterior Stabilized (LPS) knee implant and the other 15 (Group A) had Zimmer gender specific knee implants. Patients were followed up for 24 months post surgery, preoperative and postoperative data were recorded according to the knee society scoring system. All the patients were operated by standard anterior midline incision by a single surgeon and underwent the same postoperative protocol.
Results: The average age in Group A was 59.93 and in group B was 59.4. The mean preoperative Knee Score (KS) and Functional Score (FS) was 50.2 and 49.3 in Group A and B respectively. The range of motion increased following surgery in all patients but there was no statistically significant difference noted between the two groups. The postoperative KS and FS were assessed at 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and 24 months and statistical significance using Student’s t-test, on SPSS 13.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois) was done during each follow-up. There was no statistical significant difference in KS and FS between the groups at the end of 24 months.
Conclusion: Based on the results of our study we found no significant advantage of using gender specific implants oriented to female knees. Our study shows the goal of the design of the gender-specific high-flexion knee prosthesis has not been achieved.