The Role of Stability and Alignment in Improving Patient Outcomes After Total Knee Arthroplasty

Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is an effective treatment option for many patients, but a small group of patients are dissatisfied following TKA.

Alignment, in combination with balance, stability, and knee kinematics, is an important modifiable surgical factor that can affect patient outcomes.

Driven by the subset of dissatisfied patients after TKA, new techniques have evolved in the search for a more anatomic reconstruction of individual knee morphology and a more accurate approximation of the individual lower-extremity alignment.

There is a need to optimize 3 aspects of TKA to improve patient outcomes-mechanical tooling processes, implants that resurface the epiphysis, and techniques that respect the variable anatomy of patients.