Does a Uni “Feel Better” than a Total Knee? Not Necessarily,When Using Modern Implant Designs

Background: When comparing functional outcomes of patients with unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) versus total knee arthroplasty (TKA), studies often report the UKA as the preferred procedure; however, recent improvements in the design of modern TKA implants have aimed at narrowing this gap. Purpose: We sought to compare the “feel” of modern TKA implants to that of UKA, using the Forgotten Joint Score (FJS), a validated patient-reported outcome measure. Methods: We performed a retrospective review of patients who underwent TKA and UKA at 2 institutions between 2014 and 2017. All UKA procedures were robotic arm-assisted with a single implant, “traditional TKAs” were performed using traditional posterior-stabilized implants, and “modern TKAs” were performed using posterior-stabilized implants with a modern design. Differences in FJS were assessed using 1-way analysis of variance and independent 2-sample t tests. Results: A total of 600 patients were included in our study, with 200 patients in each surgical subcategory. Mean age was 62.8 ± 10.2 years and mean body mass index was 29.9 ± 4.9. Modern TKA and UKA had similar FJS at 1 year. While modern TKA had a significantly higher FJS than traditional TKA, UKA did not have a significantly higher FJS than traditional TKA. Conclusion: Our retrospective analysis found no significant differences in the FJS of patients who underwent UKA and TKA with a modern design; however, both had superior scores than traditional TKA designs. This finding suggests that modern TKA designs may have the potential to achieve the natural feeling that is typically associated with joint-conserving surgeries such as UKA, although longer follow-up is necessary.