[Patellar complications in total arthroplasty of the knee: a meta-analytic study]

Patellar complications during total knee arthroplasty (TKA) with and without prosthesis has been reported with great variability in the rates of patellar complications and has been noted by different authors. We decided to perform a meta-analysis study to find possible differences among them by measuring the effects of magnitude (EM), the rate risks (RR), and the number of patients (NP) who require this treatment. We found that in studies that include small samples, the aleatory errors are greater than those with larger samples, so the first would not be considered to estimate the effect of magnitude against control groups (without patellar prosthesis). When we carried out correct comparisons between these groups, the percentage of complications in the patellar group were reduced. We also see that the differences in patellar complications reported by different authors with a similar large number of samples are due to different levels of expertise in the surgical procedure employed. We conclude that a meta-analysis study will be necessary in Orthopedics.