Postoperative femoral component rotation using posterior condylar referencing is difficult to predict preoperatively in total knee arthroplasty.

Background: Many modern total knee arthroplasty (TKA) systems use posterior condylar axis (PCA) to derive the surgical trans-epicondylar axis (sTEA), which is widely regarded as the gold standard for femoral component rotation. However, the previous imaging studies showed that cartilage remnants can alter component rotation. We therefore conducted this study to determine how the postoperative femoral component rotation deviated from the preoperative plan using three-dimensional (3D) computed tomography (CT) which does not consider cartilage thickness.

Methods: A total of 123 knees of 97 consecutive osteoarthritis patients who underwent the same primary TKA system using PCA reference guide were included. External rotation was set at 3°or 5° according to the preoperative 3D CT plan. The number of varus knees (hip-knee-ankle (HKA) angle >5° varus) and valgus knees (HKA >5° valgus) were 100 and 5, respectively. The deviation from the preoperative plan was measured using overlapping pre- and postoperative 3D CT images.

Results: The mean (standard deviation, range) deviation from the preoperative plan in varus group, external rotation setting of 3°, 5° in varus group and valgus group were 1.3° (1.9°, -2.6° - 7.3°), 1.0° (1.6°, -2.5° - 4.8°), 3.3° (2.3°, -1.2° - 7.3°), and -0.8° (0.8°, -2.0°-0.0°), respectively. No correlation was found between the deviation from the plan and the preoperative HKA angle in varus group (R = 0.15, P = 0.15).

Conclusions: The effect of asymmetric cartilage wear for rotation in the present study was supposed to be approximately 1° as mean value, but it can vary widely from patient to patient.