What’s New in Adult Reconstructive Knee Surgery 2020

Every month, JBJS publishes a review of the most pertinent and impactful studies published in the orthopaedic literature during the previous year in 13 subspecialties. Click here for a collection of OrthoBuzz summaries of these “What’s New” articles. This month, author Michael J. Taunton, MD selected the 5 most clinically compelling findings from the more than 130 studies summarized in the January 15, 2020 “What’s New in Adult Reconstructive Knee Surgery.”

Unicompartmental Knee Arthroplasty (UKA)
—A prospective cohort study of 1,000 Oxford cementless UKAs indicated by standard Kozinn and Scott criteria found that revision-free survivorship at 10 years was 97%. Progression of lateral osteoarthritis and dislocation of the bearing were the most common reasons for revision.¹

Pain Management
—Authors of a double-blinded, prospective, randomized study assigned 60 primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA) patients to receive either a continuous adductor canal block or a single-injection adductor canal block with adjuvant agents. They found no between-group differences in pain scores up to 42 hours postoperatively.²

Post-TKA Physical Therapy (PT)
—A prospective, randomized, noninferiority trial demonstrated that 290 post-TKA patients who were randomized to either outpatient PT, unsupervised web-based PT at home, or unsupervised printed-instruction-based PT at home had no difference in knee range of motion or in patient-reported outcomes at 4 to 6 weeks or 6 months postoperatively.³

Infection Prevention
—In a retrospective review of 29,695 total joint arthroplasties, preoperative penicillin allergy testing led to a 1.19% higher rate of infection-free survival at 10 years, principally by allowing more routine use of the prophylactic antibiotic cefazolin.⁴

Revision TKA
—A retrospective case series found that patients undergoing revision TKA at an age of < 50 years had a survivorship free of re-revision of 66% at 10 years. Regardless of the reason for revision, this population also had a higher risk of mortality than the general population at 10 years.⁵

References

1. Campi S, Pandit H, Hooper G, Snell D, Jenkins C, Dodd CAF, et al. Ten-year survival and seven-year functional results of cementless Oxford unicompartmental knee replacement: A prospective consecutive series of our first 1000 cases. Knee. 2018 Dec;25(6):1231-7. Epub 2018/08/29.
2. Turner JD, Dobson SW, Henshaw DS, Edwards CJ, Weller RS, Reynolds JW, et al. Single-Injection Adductor Canal Block With Multiple Adjuvants Provides Equivalent Analgesia When Compared With Continuous Adductor Canal Blockade for Primary Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Double-Blinded, Randomized, Controlled, Equivalency Trial. J Arthroplasty. 2018 Oct;33(10):3160-6 e1. Epub 2018/06/16.
3. Fleischman AN, Crizer MP, Tarabichi M, Smith S, Rothman RH, Lonner JH, et al. 2018 John N. Insall Award: Recovery of Knee Flexion With Unsupervised Home Exercise Is Not Inferior to Outpatient Physical Therapy After TKA: A Randomized Trial. Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2019 Jan;477(1):60-9. Epub 2019/02/23.
4. Wyles CC, Hevesi M, Osmon DR, Park MA, Habermann EB, Lewallen DG, et al. 2019 John Charnley Award: Increased risk of prosthetic joint infection following primary total knee and hip arthroplasty with the use of alternative antibiotics to cefazolin: the value of allergy testing for antibiotic prophylaxis. Bone Joint J. 2019 Jun;101-B(6_Supple_B):9-15. Epub 2019/05/31.
5. Chalmers BP, Pallante GD, Sierra RJ, Lewallen DG, Pagnano MW, Trousdale RT. Contemporary Revision Total Knee Arthroplasty in Patients Younger Than 50 Years: 1 in 3 Risk of Re-Revision by 10 Years. J Arthroplasty. 2019 Jul;34(7S):S266-S70. Epub 2019/03/03.