Osteoarthritis of the knee, commonly known as osteophytes of the knee, is characterized by pain, immobility and deformity of the knee joint. It has a high incidence in middle-aged and elderly people and increases with age. According to the World Health Organization, the incidence of osteoarthritis is 50% in people over 50 years old and 80% in people over 55 years old. As China slowly enters an aging society, there are more and more patients with osteoarthritis. It is estimated that there are as many as 100 million patients with osteoarthritis in China. If not taken seriously, the consequences are likely to be chronic and disabling. The main change in osteoarthritis is cartilage degeneration and wear, along with reactive bone growth at the joint edge ligament attachments and subchondral bone, which causes joint pain, stiffness, deformity and dysfunction. Once worn, articular cartilage is not renewable. After wear and tear, inversion deformity often occurs, and the local stress load on the medial side of the knee joint is concentrated, which aggravates cartilage and subchondral bone wear, thus aggravating the inversion deformity and forming a vicious cycle. The pain becomes progressively worse and the patient is unable to walk, and total knee replacement is the only option. In fact, the early stages of cartilage wear in osteoarthritis of the knee are concentrated on the anterior medial tibial plateau, and due to previous limitations in treatment and technology, only total knee arthroplasty could be performed. The new technology of unicondylar knee arthroplasty has been a boon for countless patients. The unicondylar technique for the artificial knee began in the 1970’s. The Oxford Oxford unicondylar was introduced in 1996 and has evolved over the last decade into a new minimally invasive surgical approach to joint surgery that is technically mature internationally. There are many prostheses for unicondylar arthroplasty, and the Oxford mobile meniscus prosthesis is the most used unicondylar arthroplasty prosthesis at present, which is welcomed by more and more orthopaedic surgeons and has achieved good clinical results. There is a study on the follow-up of patients with large-scale unicondylar joint replacement surgery, and the results show that the 10-year excellent rate is about 95%, the 20-year excellent rate is about 85%, and the 30-year excellent rate is also 70%. In China, unicondylar arthroplasty has been developed since 2000. As one of the first hospitals in China to carry out this technology, the Department of Orthopedics of Jinan Military General Hospital has so far performed more than 100 cases of unicondylar joint replacement, with a 97% follow-up rate. The unicondylar arthroplasty is a surface replacement of the unilateral diseased compartment of the tibiofemoral joint without disturbing other normal or nearly normal parts of the knee joint, thus obtaining the maximum benefit with the least trauma and solving the main problems that plague the patient. Unicondylar arthroplasty is a minimally invasive procedure in which only a small portion of the medial knee joint is replaced under the guidance of precision instruments, resulting in less trauma, faster recovery, fewer complications, better postoperative function, and better proprioception. The unicondylar arthroplasty also preserves the anterior and posterior fork ligaments and proprioception of the knee joint, which allows the patient to feel better and move more freely after surgery.
The unicondylar knee arthroplasty solves the problem of unilateral knee compartment lesion with minimal damage, avoids over-treatment of total knee arthroplasty, gives patients an additional choice between conservative treatment and total knee arthroplasty, and preserves the opportunity for total knee arthroplasty for younger patients, making the dream of many patients with osteoarthrosis to get rid of the disease and have a healthy life again come true.