Recovery of joint position sense after total knee replacement: the effects of soft tissue dissection

To find out the effect of sharp dissection compared to electrocautery for soft tissue release and balancing in total knee replacement on proprioceptive sense, the study was carried out as a parellel double blind trial with 2 year follow-up. There were 52 patients in the sharp dissection group and 42 patients in the electrocautery group. Position sense of the operated knees was evaluated by the ability to reproduce the same angles as the non operative knees which acted as reference knees. The absolute different angles were used to evaluate the position sense. Before the operation, the patients in both groups had similar biographic data, pathology, and absolute different angles of knee positioning. After the operation, both groups had improvement in knee position sense; however, the sharp dissection group had more rapid improvement in the 1st post operative year. There was no significant difference at the 2 year follow-up.