Yan-Song Qi, Bo Yang, Jia-Kuo Yu, Ji-Ying Zhang, Ai-Bing Huang, Hai-Jun Wang

 Introduction

The conventional total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is the most successful surgical procedure for relieving pain and improving poor function in patients with advanced arthritis. However, postoperative pain and delayed rehabilitation are the greatest complaints for the conventional approach. Recently, various minimally invasive surgery (MIS) TKA-techniques have been developed to address the concern. MIS-TKAs have shown less postoperative pain, shorter hospital stays, and quicker recovery after surgery.

Inappropriate surgical technique, inadequate exposure, and lack of TKA experience can cause lower limb and component malalignment, finally result in inferior function and early revision. Quadriceps-sparing (QS) TKA is different from other minimally invasive approaches. The first MIS-QS TKA procedure was performed in 2002 [1] and is similar to medial capsulotomy performed in unicompartmental arthroplasty. [2] Nevertheless, only a few short-term follow-up studies have been published on lower limb and component alignments following MIS-QS TKA. [3] The purpose of this study was to evaluate the lower limb and component alignments following MIS-QS TKA in comparison with conventional TKA after more than 5 years follow-up.