New knee replacement procedures may be adopted by hospitals due to their advanced techniques but it takes surgeons a long time to become proficient at the new methods meaning that patients receiving new surgery are more likely to experience complications and require revision surgery than those patients treated using older, more-established techniques.
Research on over 22 thousand knee arthroplasty patients from Finland has shown that those patients offered a new endoprosthesis model were at the greatest risk of requiring revision surgery. The first 15 patients to be treated with each technique were found to have a 48% higher risk although after the fifteenth patient the surgeons were sufficiently experienced at the surgery to dramatically reduce the number of patients requiring revision surgery.
Total knee replacement (arthroplasty) is a common treatment for patients with severe osteoarthritis and the number of new models and techniques being developed are increasing. Alternatives for total knee replacement include partial knee replacement and AposTherapy.
