Unexplained pain after total knee arthroplasty

Abstract

Although total knee arthroplasty (TKA) improves function and reduces pain for the large majority of the patients, a few continue to have pain and require investigation. The causes of dysfunction and pain after total knee arthroplasty can be described as intrinsic (intra-articular) or extrinsic (extra-articular) sources of pain. For the majority of the cases, following a complete evaluation protocol, the cause of pain can be identified and a specific treatment can be applied, however occasionally there remains a group of patients with unexplained pain whose management is difficult. It was our hypothesis that revising a TKA without pre-operative diagnosis of the failure is not worth. Therefore, the aimed of this review was to: 1) analyse the results of revision TKA for unexplained pain, and 2) described the potential solutions for an alternative conservative management of the painful TKA.