Outpatient Unicompartment Knee Arthroplasty With Indwelling Femoral Nerve Catheter

Contemporary multimodal anesthesia regimens allow the performance of unicompartment knee arthroplasty (UKA) on an outpatient basis. Our initial pilot experience is presented using a continuous femoral nerve block as an adjunct for 24 patients classified as American Society of Anesthesiology class 1 (14 men, 10 women; median age, 56 years; range, 46-72 years). After minimally invasive UKA, patients documented their pain and oral medication use while at home for the first 5 days. Adverse events, medication adverse effects, and the amount of infused ropivacaine were recorded. Median pain scores for the first 3 days were 1, 2, and 2 (at rest) and 4, 5, and 3 (during physical therapy). Eighteen patients (75%) required less than 4 mg oral hydromorphone/d. Of the 18, 10 (42%) did not require supplemental oral opioids. The median catheter use was 3 days. Our results suggest that with careful patient selection and adequate teaching, continuous femoral nerve blocks may be used as part of a multimodal pain regimen to assist the delivery of outpatient UKA with high patient satisfaction.