Abstract
Unicompartmental knee arthroplasty has been a popular treatment option for osteoarthritis, since popularised by Marmor in the early 1970’s. The Miller-Galante prosthesis has been in widespread use in Taranaki since 1992. The initial results were encouraging, however, recently a number of failures have caused us to review our results.
The indications for the procedure were osteonecrosis or osteoarthritis limited to one tibiofemoral compartment of the knee. 145 patients were available for assessment from January 1992 – December 2001. Patients were retrospectively reviewed with a clinical assessment, questionnaire and radiographic examination. The Knee Society Scoring System was used. There were 175 knees available for review.
There was 100% follow-up. The average age of patient was 69 years. The average follow-up time was 6 years. The10 year survival was 94%. The major cause for failure was polyethylene wear (4.5). There was no statistical difference between age, tibial insert size and different surgeons.
The unicompartmental Miller-Galante knee prosthesis has very good results at 10 years. However, a high percentage of polyethylene wear is a concern and requires further investigation into the possible causes for this.
The abstracts were prepared by Jean-Claude Theis. Correspondence should be addressed to him at Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Dunedin Hospital, Private Bag 1921, Dunedin, New Zealand.
