Abstract
Abstract
A number of postoperative complications of navigated total knee arthroplasty have been discussed in the literature, including tracker pin site infection and fracture. In this paper we discuss the low postoperative complication rate in a series of 3100 navigated total knee arthroplasties and the overall complication rate in a systematic analysis of the literature.
Methods
3100 consecutive patients with navigated total knee arthroplasties from 2001 to 2016 were retrospectively evaluated for complications specific to navigation. We discuss the two cases of postoperative fracture through tracker pin sites that we experienced and compare this systematically to the literature.
Results
Postoperatively, our 3100 patient cohort experienced a total of two fractures through pin sites for an incidence of 0.065%. One was a distal femoral fracture which was treated surgically, and the other was a proximal tibial fracture treated nonoperatively. Due to our incorporation of the tracker sites within our operative incision, there were no identifiable pin site infections which others have noted. Our 0.065% fracture rate compares favorably with the 0.16% rate of fracture published in the literature. We had no separate pin site infections in comparison to the 0.47% incidence of separate pin site infection reported by those who use seperate percutaneous incisions for tracker placement.
Conclusion
There is an extremely low risk of perioperative complications due to the instrumentation used in navigated total knee arthroplasty when utilizing the Stryker Navigation System and 4.0 mm anchoring pins placed within the surgical incision. Our experience has demonstrated that careful placement of the bicortical anchoring pin is important.
