Medial unicompartmental knee arthroplasty with the Miller-Galante prosthesis.
BACKGROUND
Unicompartmental knee arthroplasty has become a popular treatment alternative for osteoarthritis that is confined to the medial part of the knee. Excellent intermediate-term results recently have been reported in association with the Miller-Galante unicompartmental implant. The purpose of the present study was to report on our longer-term experience with the Miller-Galante medial unicompartmental knee implant.


METHODS
We evaluated the results of 113 medial unicompartmental knee arthroplasties that had been performed with use of the Miller-Galante implant in eighty-four patients between 1989 and 2000. The mean age of the patients at the time of surgery was sixty-eight years. Forty-five patients were men, and thirty-nine were women. Thirteen patients (sixteen knees) died at a mean of seven years after the index arthroplasty. No patient was lost to follow-up. The remaining seventy-one patients (ninety-seven knees) were followed for a mean of ten years and were evaluated with use of the Knee Society clinical and radiographic rating system.


RESULTS
Eleven knees were revised at a mean of four years after the index procedure. The mean Knee Society knee and function scores for the sixty-one patients (eighty-six knees) who were living and who had not had a revision improved from 48 and 53 points preoperatively to 93 and 80 points at the time of the most recent evaluation. The five and ten-year rates of survival were 94% and 90%, respectively, with revision to tricompartmental knee arthroplasty as the end point and 93% and 86%, respectively, with revision or radiographic loosening as the end point.


CONCLUSIONS
The Miller-Galante medial unicompartmental knee arthroplasty provided excellent pain relief and restoration of function in carefully selected patients and demonstrated durable implant survival at ten years.
Naudie
Douglas
D
Division of Orthopaedic Surgery, London Health Sciences Centre--University Campus, University of Western Ontario, 339 Windermere Road, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5A5. dnaudie@mac.com
Guerin
Jeff
J
Parker
David A
DA
Bourne
Robert B
RB
Rorabeck
Cecil H
CH
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D019645:Arthroplasty, Replacement, Knee / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007720:Knee Prosthesis; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011474:Prosthesis Design; D013997:Time Factors