Abstract
The long-term outcome and survivorship of TKA in Asian countries have been reported to be excellent, comparable to Western countries. However, increased knee flexion is required for many daily activities in Asian cultures, which remains a major problem to be resolved. High-flexion TKA designs have been introduced to improve flexion after TKA and to allow a high degree of flexion in a safe manner. However, several biomechanical studies have shown that high-flexion designs have a greater risk for the loosening of the femoral component compared to the conventional TKA designs. We evaluated the implant survival and the mid-term clinical and radiological outcomes of Asian patients who had undergone high-flexion TKA and assessed whether high-flexion activities increased the risk of premature failure.
We prospectively followed 72 Nexgen LPS-flex fixed TKA in 47 patients implanted by a single surgeon between March 2003 and September 2004. Five patients (6 knees) expired during follow-up. A Kaplan-Meier survivorship analysis using revision surgery as the end point was used to determine the probability of survival for the cohort and the equality of survival between two subgroups who could perform high-flexion activities or not. Median follow-up was 6.5 (0.9–8.6) years.
Twenty-five patients (33 knees) received a revision for aseptic loosening of the femoral component at a mean of 3.5 years (range, 0.9–7.8 years). According to the Kaplan-Meier survivorship analysis, the probabilities of survival without revision for aseptic loosening are 66.7% and 51.8% at 5 and 8 years, respectively. The 8-year cumulative survivorship is lower (30.6%) when squatting, kneeling, or sitting cross-legged could be achieved than if none of these activities were possible (78.3%). In the surviving knees, non-progressive radiolucent lines were observed around the femoral component of 12 patients (15 knees) and one tibial component.
The overall mid-term high-flex implant survival of our Asian cohort is lower than that of the conventional and other high-flexion designs. This unacceptable high rate of femoral component loosening is strongly associated with postoperative high flexion activities.
