Summary

Retrospective comparative study of a cohort of 164 patients who underwent UKA surgery for osteoarthritis of a single compartment in the same center with robotic-assisted and conventional technique. The Robotic-assisted unicompartmental knee arthroplasty proved to be superior to the conventional technique, with shorter surgical time, less intraoperative bleeding, shorter time to walk, and a trend t

Abstract

Introduction

Robotic-assisted (RA) unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) has shown to be successful in component positioning through a reliable preoperative planning and intraoperative adjustment.
The aim of this study is to compare our experience with patients undergoing unicompartmental knee arthroplasty with robotic assistance versus conventional technique.

Materials And Methods

Retrospective comparative study of a cohort of patients who underwent UKA surgery for osteoarthritis of a single compartment in the same center.
Patients with complete records in the institutional data base were included.
The records were reviewed to document demographic data and both intraoperative and postoperative results during hospitalization.
Statistical analysis included Fisher's test, t-student, and logistic regression for

Significance

of 5% (p<0.05).

Results

A total of 164 patients were evaluated, 44 operated with RA and 120 with conventional technique (CT).
There were no significant differences in both groups according to age and gender.
Torniquet time was longer in the RA group (79.35 min vs 61.90 min).
Regarding the surgical time, the results favored the RA group in average of 110.4 min vs 126.82 min for the CT. The calculated intraoperative bleeding for the RA was 111.54 ml vs 190.625 ml for CT; p=0.0014). No patient required red blood cell transfusion.
There were no differences in hematocrit post operative in both groups.
In the RA group, 35.7% were able to walk on the same day of surgery and 61.9% on the first postoperative day. In the conventional group, 21.67% were able to walk on the same day of surgery and 59.3% on the first postoperative day.
The robotic-assisted group had fewer days of hospitalization than the conventional group (2.61 days average vs 3.68 days), with no statistically significant difference (p=0.1).

Conclusions

Robotic-assisted unicompartmental knee arthroplasty proved to be superior to the conventional technique, with shorter surgical time, less intraoperative bleeding, shorter time to walk, and a trend towards earlier discharge compared to the conventional technique, improving the cost-effectiveness of this surgery.