Degree of Osteoarthritis and the Results of Total Knee Arthroplasty

Objective: Osteoarthritis of the knee is one of the leading causes of pain and disability. The primary goal of the total knee arthroplasty is to relief the pain and to improve the patient's quality of life. The aim of the study is find any correlation between the preoperative radiographic degree of osteoarthritis and the results in primary total knee arthroplasty. Study Methods: It is a retrospective study. 160 patients, 203 knees were included in the study. Patients were between the ages of 31 to 90 years of age (69.4). 62% were females and 38% were male. An x-ray was taken for all patients in order to grade the damage of each knee according to the radiographic grading system of Kellgren and Lawrence. After the operation each patient was assessed after 1, 5 and 10 years. Results: In general the benefit of surgery was obvious among all x-ray Osteoarthritic grades, which was obvious by the improvement in the post-op scores among all four groups in the first year after surgery, although early stages grades (I&II) showed better improvement in function scores than the late two stages within the same period. In 5 and 10 years, however, all grades' outcomes went down in both knee and function scores. Conclusion: These results prove delaying surgery in symptomatic early stages is of no benefit. It has also showed that the outcome of the surgery is of high benefit to all patients regardless their pre-op x-ray grades.