Clinical Review
The Application of Minimally Invasive Surgical Techniques. Part II: Total Knee Arthroplasty
Am J Orthop. 2012 October;41(10):140-144
Author and Disclosure Information
Derek F. Amanatullah, MD, PhD, Matthew T. Burrus, BS, Sathappan S. Sathappan, MD, Brett Levine, MD, and Paul E. Di Cesare, MD
Dr. Amanatullah is Resident, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of California–Davis Health System, Sacramento, California.
Mr. Burrus is Medical Student, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Texas Medical School, Houston, Texas.
Dr. Sathappan is Adjunct Assistant Professor, Consultant, and Program Director, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore.
Dr. Levine is Associate Professor, Midwest Orthopaedics, Park Ridge, Illinois.
Dr. Di Cesare is Professor and Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of California–Davis Health System, Sacramento, California.
Traditional surgical approaches often involve making large skin incisions and extensively dissecting healthy tissue to access diseased anatomy. Obviously more desirable is to make smaller incisions and more focused dissections and achieve the same postsurgical outcomes. Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is gaining popularity in many orthopedic fields, but MIS techniques are not without risk. Continued use of these techniques is a topic of debate. If alignment is satisfactory with MIS, and if the complication rates of MIS are similar to those of traditional approaches, it seems sensible to consider the less invasive approaches to enable earlier patient recovery and improve cosmesis. Skeptics claim that there is no advantage in using MIS over time-tested approaches and are concerned that MIS approaches are being implemented before being properly subjected to peer review.