Abstract
The alignment of the knee following total knee arthroplasty (TKA), especially tibial alignment, is a major factor determining the long-term survival of the prosthesis. A disadvantage of using extramedullary alignment guides of the tibia for TKA is the difficulty in correctly identifying the ankle center, and surgeons cannot construct the tibial mechanical axis correctly without the correct location of the ankle center. Although numerous studies have reported bony and soft tissue landmarks for determining the ankle center, a consensus has yet to be reached regarding this matter. This problem is complicated by rotational mismatch between the knee and ankle joint. Because it is difficult to frontalize the knee and ankle joints simultaneously on the same frontal plane. When using extramedullary alignment guides of the tibia, the guides should be applied to the tibia while keeping the knees frontal. The purpose of this study was to determine the position of the ankle center, which is useful for setting extramedullary alignment guides, by using CT data of osteoarthritic knees.
CT data of fifty patients (fifty knees) with varus osteoarthritic knees for primary TKA were retrospectively analyzed. Tibial anteroposterior (AP) axis and transmalleolar axis (TMA) were used as reference axes of the knee and ankle joint, respectively. When using above these reference axes, the offset distance from the bimalleolar center was measured as the position of the ankle center. The angular errors were defined as the varus angle of the proximal tibial cut caused by this offset distance when the position of the ankle center was regarded as the bimalleolar center.
The position of the ankle center was 1.5 ± 1.2 mm and 2.3 ± 1.5 mm medial to the bimalleolar center with reference to tibial AP axis and TMA, respectively. There was a significant difference between the position of the ankle center with respect to the tibial AP axis and with respect to the TMA (p < 0.01). The mean angular error with respect to the tibial AP axis was 0.3 ± 0.2 °, and the value with respect to TMA was 0.4 ± 0.2 °. The maximum varus angular error along tibial AP axis was less than 0.7 degrees.
The positions of the ankle center differed according to the reference axis. Since the angular error was small enough, the bimalleolar center along the tibial AP axis could be used as the ankle center in TKA patients with osteoarthritis knees.
