Biomechanical study of effect of tibial posteromedial defect depth and area on primary TKA implant stability.

Background: Medial tibial defects are common in patients who underwent primary total knee arthroplasty for varus deformity. Previous clinical studies have categorized tibial defects according to the depth of the defects and recommended different ways of addressing them. This study aimed to perform a biomechanical FE analysis to investigate the role of depth and surface area of the medial tibial plateau defects in the stability of the tibial component in primary TKA implants.

Method: Forty posteromedial tibial defect models with eight different depths (including 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 16, and 18 mm) and five different surface areas (including 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50% medial surface involvement) were used to create the FE models. Loads were applied to ellipses on tibial tray with 70-30% mediolateral distribution. The resulting relative motion of the bone and implant was measured to evaluate the tibial tray instability.

Results: For defects with less than 20% surface involvement, the amount of relative motion had a moderately increasing fashion; however, in more significant percentages of surface involvement of the medial tibial plateau, especially in 50%, the graphs revealed a nonlinear increasing pattern which means that the depth would affect the amount of relative motion only when defect area is large.

Conclusion: In defects with less than 20% surface involvement approaches like graft and cement augmentation would suffice whereas it would be essential to consider a more appropriate method like stem or metal augments for defects with more than 20% of medial surface involvement as the instability increased nonlinearly.