Intraoperative kinematic protocol for knee joint evaluation
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Updated: Feb 6, 2026

Tissue Collection and RNA Extraction from the Human Osteoarthritic Knee Joint
Published on: July 22, 2021
S Martelli1, S Zaffagnini, B Falcioni
1Laboratorio di Biomeccanica, Istituti Ortopedici Rizzoli, Via di Barbiano 1/10, 40136, Bologna, Italy. s.martelli@biomec.ior.it
Abstract:
Although knee kinematics has been investigated widely, no standard, objective evaluation of the kinematics behaviour of the joint is used at present during surgical treatment. We propose a kinematic protocol for a manual intraoperative evaluation of the knee behaviour, with which the range of motion, the 'screw-home' mechanism and knee instabilities could be quantified. The method does not require anatomical landmarks, because it is computed from standard tests used in clinical practice and gives a decomposition of the knee movement comparable to the well known Grood and Suntay analysis [E.S. Grood, W.J. Suntay, A joint coordinate system for the clinical description of three-dimensional motions: application to the knee, J. Biomech. Eng. 105 (1983) 136-144]. We describe the protocol, report the evaluation of its numerical features and provide a comparison with Grood and Suntay method on ten porcine knees.
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