Abstract
Introduction
Cementless Total Knee Replacement (TKR) was introduced to improve the longevity of implant; but has yet to be widely adopted because of reports of higher earlier failures in some series. The cementless TKR design has evolved recently and we have been using cementless component – both femoral and tibial on our patients. The long follow-up for fully TKR has been scarce in the literature. The purpose of this study isto investigate the minimum of ten years clinical and radiographic result of cementless titanium component and cementless tantalum component in primary TKR.
Material & method
From 2008 to 2010 317 TKR underwent primary total knee with cementless femoral component titanium based (Zimmer Nexgen) and cementless tantalum component monoblock tibial component, The surgery was performed mainly on younger patients - average age was 48 yrs old ranging from 26 yrs old to 62 yrs old. All surgeries were performed by single surgeon. All patients were followed clinically and radiographically for a minimum of 8 yrs. Mean 7.8 years and range from 7 to 9 years. The underlying diagnosis for majority of the cases were degenerative arthritis in 97 of the cases and rheumatoid arthritis on the 3%.
Result
We have revised 6 cases − 3 cases were for sepsis. They were revised in 2 stages. And we also revised 5 cases for loosening of femoral component. The tibial component revision for aseptic loosening or osteolysis for an end point for survivorship was a 100% for the tibia monoblock design. There was no radiographic evidence of tibial component loosening or subsidence, or migration at the time of the latest follow-up for tibia monoblock. On the femoral part we documented 16 cases other than those 4 revision for osteolysis, where limited osteolysis happened in some area of the tibial component but it did not affect stability and those has been followed up for a longer term. There was interesting phenomena in some of those cases where bone growth happened around the anterior cortex where it sealed the component entirely. Knee society scores improved from 51 pre-operatively to 94 pre-operatively on the last clinical visit. We had 32 cases where the patientswere able to regain their full mobility flexion of over 150 degrees.
Conclusion
Our data clearly shows that the cementless TKR has excellent result as compared to the cemented with a good survival ship at 10 years. The tantalum tibial component shows an excellent survivorship. The femoral component also present reasonably good result but we still faced a few cases of loosening. The functional outcome for the implant with the surgery was satisfactory. With this result we strongly recommend using the cementless implant in young patients. We believe that cementless tibial is totally safe at this point as well as the femoral cementless prosthesis. However, we expect some improvement with the outcome with the femoral component when using the tantalum.
