Arthroscopic Indications for Unicompartmental Knee Arthroplasty

Minimally invasive unicompartmental knee arthroplasty has been advocated as a treatment of medial unicompartmental arthritis. Patient selection is a crucial step in obtaining acceptable results of unicompartmental arthroplasty. Some authors have advocated arthroscopy at the time of surgery, to evaluate the lateral compartment. Those patients with significant lateral wear or an unstable meniscus might benefit from total knee arthroplasty instead of the planned unicompartmental arthroplasty. The senior author treated 100 consecutive patients with minimal incision unicompartmental knee arthroplasty with intraoperative evaluation to determine whether to proceed directly to total knee arthroplasty. In two cases, a decision was made to abandon the unicompartmental arthroplasty and proceed with total knee arthroplasty. All patients were evaluated at minimum 2-year follow-up with Knee Society Scores, radiographic evaluation, and clinical evaluation.