Moderate External Rotation of Tibial Component Generates More Natural Kinematics Than Internal Rotation After Total Knee Arthroplasty

• DOI: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.910311
• Publication Date: 2022-07-13T11:48:45Z
• Authors: Chaohua Fang; Yichao Luan; Zhiwei Wang; Long Shao; Tiebing Qu; Cheng-Kung Cheng
• Keywords: total knee arthroplasty; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; kinematics; computational simulation; tibial component; Bioengineering and Biotechnology; rotational alignment; TP248.13-248.65; Biotechnology

This study aimed to investigate the influence of tibial malrotation on knee kinematics after total knee arthroplasty (TKA). A symmetric fixed-bearing posterior-stabilized prosthesis was implanted in the validated knee model with different rotational alignments of the tibial component (neutral, 3° external rotation, 5° external rotation, 3° internal rotation, and 5° internal rotation). Computational kinematic simulations were used to evaluate the postoperative kinematics of the knee joint including anteroposterior translation femoral condyles and axial rotation of tibial component during 0°–135° knee flexion. The results revealed that the neutral position of the tibial component was not the closest kinematics to the intact knee, the model with 5° external rotation of the tibial component showed the closest lateral condyle translation and tibial axial rotation, and moderate external rotation could improve the kinematics after TKA.