Day Care Surgery for Unicompartmental Knee Arhtroplasty

There has been increasing interest in accelerated programs for day care surgery within unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) in Europe. We examined the feasibility of a elective day care surgery pathway in patients undergoing UKA.

We hypothesize that there is no difference between the Day Care surgery pathway compared to the Rapid Recovery pathway in patients operated for unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA).

Pre-, per- 3 months and 1 year post operative

As part of the pathway, 6 weeks before surgery patients visit the “Joint school” to get familiar with the postoperative exercises, the training program and walking (stairs) with crutches under the supervision of a physiotherapist.



Indication for surgery, are as generally accepted for UKA. Patients are operated with the use of patients specific pin guides (PSG; Signature, Biomet, Warsaw INC) without tourniquete and received the uncemented Oxford partial knee implant (Biomet, Warsaw INC). Intra operatively, a long acting analgesia (150ml Ropivacaine (2mg/ml)) is injected as described by the protocol of Kehlet and Andersen for early postoperative pain relief before insertion of the prosthesis. [10] First posterior (50ml) and anterior (50ml) joint capsule are injected. After prosthesis is placed the subcutis is infiltrated (50ml). No drains and catheters are used. Urine retention is tested with the use of a bladder scan.



Within 6 hours of infusion of spinal anesthesia the patient starts to mobilize under the supervision of a physiotherapist. Daily exercises are executed individualy. Patients are discharged if following criteria are achieved: safe mobilization, transfers and able to walk stairs with crutches if necessary and a knee flexion of >70° .