Varus osteotomy of the distal part of the femur. A survivorship analysis.

Varus osteotomy of the distal part of the femur is often the procedure of choice for the treatment of osteoarthrosis of the lateral compartment associated with genu valgum. We followed twenty-one knees (twenty patients) long term or until failure. At the most recent evaluation (average, 133 months; range, ninety-seven to 240 months), thirteen osteotomies were still successful, seven had failed, and one patient (in whom the knee had remained functional) had died. Of the seven failures, three occurred early (at twelve or twenty-four months) and four occurred late (between seventy-two and ninety-eight months). The probability of survival at ten years was 64 per cent (95 per cent confidence interval, 48 to 80 per cent), as determined with use of the Kaplan-Meier method. We concluded that, with proper selection of patients, this procedure is effective for the treatment of gonarthrosis of the lateral compartment associated with valgus deformity.