Analysis of an early intervention tibial component for medial osteoarthritis

Tibial component loosening is an important failure mode in unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) which may be due to the 6-8 mm of bone resection required. To address component loosening and fixation, a new early intervention (EI) design is proposed which reverses the traditional material scheme between femoral and tibial components. The EI design consists of a plastic inlay for the distal femur and a thin metal plate for the proximal tibia. With this reversed materials scheme, the EI design requires minimal tibial bone resection compared with traditional UKA. This study investigated, by means of finite element (FE) simulations, the advantages of a thin metal tibial component compared with traditional UKA tibial components, such as an all-plastic inlay or a metal-backed onlay. We hypothesized that an EI tibial component would produce comparable stress, strain, and strain energy density (SED) characteristics to an intact knee and more favorable values than UKA components, due primarily to the preservation of dense cancellous bone near the surface. Indeed, FE results showed that stresses in the supporting bone for an EI design were close to intact, while stresses, strains, and strain energy densities were reduced compared with an all-plastic UKA component. Analyzed parameters were similar for an EI and a metal-backed onlay, but the EI component had the advantage of minimal resection of the stiffest bone.