Unicondylar knee replacement versus total knee replacement for the treatment of medial knee osteoarthritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Since the optimal surgery for isolated medial knee osteoarthritis (OA) is unclear, this study aimed at comparing the effectiveness of unicondylar knee replacement (UKR) with total knee replacement (TKR) for simple medial knee OA. Methods Literature searches of PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were searched up to 1th April 2020. Only studies comparing UKR with TKR for isolated medial knee OA were included. Data collection and extraction, quality assessment, and data analyses were performed according to the Cochrane standards. Results A total of 13 articles with 1888 patients were included, among which, 944 and 944 underwent UKR and TKR, respectively. The analyzed postoperative outcomes were mostly within 5 years of follow-up. The meta-analysis showed that UKR improved knee general function (P < 0.00001) and health (P = 0.02), moreover, reduced post-operative pain (P = 0.01) and complications (P < 0.05) more than TKR. There were no significant differences in postoperative revision (P = 0.252), high-activity arthroplasty score (HAAS) (P = 0.307) and Oxford knee score (OKS) (P = 0.15) between the two techniques. Conclusions The patients of UKR could achieve better clinical results than that of TKR, moreover, there were negligible differences between the two techniques in postoperative revision in the early and mid-term follow-up and surgeons should be aware of the important reasons for revision of UKR. Thus, UKR instead of TKR should be performed in patients with late-stage isolated medial knee OA.