Mid-term survivorship of minimally invasive unicompartmental arthroplasty with a fixed-bearing implant: revision rate and mechanisms of failure.

Minimally invasive unicondylar arthroplasty (UKA) continues to gain popularity for the management of patients with degenerative arthritis limited to one compartment of the knee. In this study, we examine a series of 517 fixed-bearing, cemented unicompartmental knee components implanted in patients to manage degenerative arthritis in the medial compartment of their knee. All UKAs were performed at a single institution using the same fixed-bearing design. In this study we sought to examine the survivorship of the UKA components and the mechanisms of failure for the knees that were revised. The survivorship and revision rate with this implant were similar to those found in other published reports of fixed-bearing unicompartmental arthroplasties performed through minimally invasive surgical techniques.