My husband was told last year that he needed both knees replaced due to degenerative arthritis. He has little to no cartiledge left and is starting to get bow legged but his ligaments and tendons are intact. The trouble is that he is 48 and they feel he is too young for total knee replacement because he will very likely outlive the replacements which have a life span of 10-12 years.
TheUnispacer® is a new technique that sounds really promising. He appears to meet the requirements and has an appointment to see another orthopaedic surgeon on Thursday.
I have read the literature and all but I would welcome some real life personal experiences, comments, etc.
A lady I used to work with got this done to both of her knees, and she loved it. She had yet to return to work before I was laid off, but she visited us often while she was recuperating. She said the pain was not near as bad as she had expected, and when I saw her 3 weeks post-op, she was moving as well, if not better, than she had been, though she did use a cane to take some of the pressure off (she is a big lady… I would say approximately 250 lbs. on a 5 ft. 5 in. frame)
I hope everything goes well for your husband!
hi…i work in computer assisted orthopaedics, and the surgeon i work for does total hips and total knees.
i don’t know much about unicondylar replacements, except that it’s a fairly new technique that is rapidly gaining popularity among surgeons, for just the reasons you mentioned.
a lot of people get bad knees at ages that are impractical for a TKR, so if one condyle is still in decent shape, it’s much less invasive (quicker recovery time, less time with an exposed incision, shorter surgery, etc.) to just resurface one condyle, and then when that wears out, the time will probably be right for a TKR.
the idea is, replace what needs replacing, and nothing more. i’m not a surgeon, so i can’t tell you how far developed this technique is, only that my surgeon (who had previously done TKRs and THRs for over 5 years) is starting to do these, and we are starting to research developing a unicondylar system, so i assume it’s a good alternative to TKR when a full knee resurfacing isn’t practical.
if you have time to make the decision, i will be attending the american academy of orthopaedic surgeons’ annual meeting later this week, and i can report back with what i learn there on the subject. i’m also very interested.
although, now that i looked at the link a bit more, it looks like this is a bit different from UKR. that appears to be just a spacer that’s put in. i don’t know very much about that at all. it appears to be an attempt to replace the functionality of the cartilage to delay TKR. which makes sense.
no bone cutting, minimal intervention: it seems like a good idea. probably little to no recovery time.
i’ll see if i can find out more, but let me know how it goes.