In-vitro wear of fixed and mobile bearing unicompartmental knee replacements

Introduction Unicompartmental knee replacement (UKR) is an increasingly popular surgical intervention for the treatment of osteoarthritis, involving the replacement of only one compartment of the natural knee. There is promising clinical literature which shows excellent long term survivorship of both fixed and mobile bearing UKR, with fixed bearings showing more consistent long-term performance [1]. There is limited data examining the in-vitro performance of UKR [2]. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of bearing design and kinematics on the in-vitro wear performance of medial and lateral unicompartmental knees.