Patient-specific instrumentation for total knee arthroplasty: a literature review

Abstract

During the past decade, total knee arthroplasty (TKA) has been markedly increased. Recently, patient-specific custom cutting guides have been commercially introduced in order to achieve an accurate component alignment during TKA. In fact, these cutting blocks are specific to a patient's knee anatomy and should help the surgeons to perform bone cuts, reducing the complexity of conventional alignment and sizing tools. Nevertheless, there are critical arguments against patient-specific cutting guides for routine use, such as poor evidence and higher costs. Additionally, there are still no mild and long-term results available that describe the clinical outcomes following patient-specific instrumentation of TKR, cost-effectiveness and lower revision rates. Aim of the current manuscript was to describe the recent improvements of the surgical technique and instrumentation of TKA, reviewing the recent literature concerning the PSI technology.