Abstract
Distal femur fractures are commonly treated initially with locking plates and retrograde intramedullary nails and are usually successful with a nonunion rate of 10%. Despite the generally successful healing, there will continue to be a subset of patients who will continue to have knee pain due to nonunion, posttraumatic arthritis, knee instability, or other etiologies. Nonoperative management for posttraumatic arthritis includes the same treatment modalities as with osteoarthritis. Surgical options include osteoarticular autograft and allograft, realignment osteotomies, and unicompartmental or total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Due to this suboptimal outcome, over the last couple decades several case series on the use of primary TKA or distal femoral replacement for distal femur fractures have been published. The goal was that an immediate arthroplasty would allow immediate weight bearing and allow patients to regain mobility faster with the theory that they will have fewer complications. Arthroplasty can be more challenging in these cases but focusing on proper alignment, positioning, and fixation can lead to good patient outcomes.
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Ponnusamy, K., Deshmukh, A. (2021). Post-traumatic Arthritis of the Distal Femur. In: Thakkar, S.C., Hasenboehler, E.A. (eds) Post-Traumatic Arthritis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50413-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50413-7_10
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