The stress-inducible displacement detected through RSA in non-migrating UKR

Abstract

Roentgen stereophotogrammetric analysis (RSA) under stress conditions was used to investigate possible stress-inducible displacement of the tibial component of unicompartmental knee prostheses (UKR) in which the stability was previously assessed by radiographic evaluation and standard supine RSA examinations. Sixteen patients, implanted with Duracon UNI(R) prosthesis, were selected for this study. The RSA protocol included examinations in plain upright standing posture and during execution of stress-inducing tasks in weight-bearing stance. The first follow-up was performed at an average of 14 months, and the second one at 26 months. The results showed non-negligible stress-induced rotations of the prosthetic tibial component in all the patients in most of the stress tasks performed. Rotational stress tasks and squatting turned out to be the stress conditions in which induced displacement reached the most significant values (p<0.05). These micromotions occurred mainly around the transverse axis of the knee joint and in one examination around the sagittal axis. Stress-induced translations were negligible in all the examinations. Moreover, we focused our attention on two patients suffering from inexplicable pain, and we observed a significant difference in the inducible rotation around the x-axis between these patients and the remaining fourteen. Stress-inducible displacement is a common finding in knee prostheses, but we observed that in patients with inexplicable pain, these micromotions reached values greater than the median calculated on patients without any pain. This result suggests the introduction of the stress-inducible displacement as a new parameter to be taken into consideration when analyzing the outcome of patients treated by UKR.