New Prosthesis Requires Just a Small Incision.

• Position: Brief Article

A new approach to knee replacement surgery using a specially designed prosthesis and instrumentation that enables access to the knee through a small incision dramatically reduces time in the hospital, pain, and expenses while increasing the immediate and long-term mobility of patients who receive the procedure compared with traditional knee replacement surgery. The surgical instrumentation that permits minimally invasive unicompartmental knee replacement reduces the size of the incision required to place the prosthesis from about 18 inches in conventional knee replacement surgery to about three inches.

"The smaller incision speeds the patients' time to reach maximum medical improvement, and, more importantly, it offers patients greater function than a total knee replacement. It also cuts down time in the length of stay in the hospital, time in the operating room, [and] the need for physical therapy, and reduces the chances of complications," explains Mitchell Sheinkop, an orthopedic surgeon at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago, III. "Patients are able to leave ... within 24 hours, compared with a hospital stay of four days that is the average for a partial knee replacement through [the] traditional approach, and compared with five days for a full knee replacement."

The use of precision instrumentation assures the reproducibility of the cut of the bone and the orientation of the prosthesis implant through the small incision. As a result, the long-term outcome and survivorship of the prostheses are greatly improved, he says. "This is important as the baby boomer population is growing older, living longer, and wanting to keep vigorously active as they move through their 50s, 60s, and 70s...