The prediction of knee flexion ROM after total knee arthroplasty

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the ROM of knee flexion before and after total knee arthroplasty (TKA), with the object of establishing prediction methods for postoperative ROM in the early stage. Subjects: The subjects were 190 legs of 126 patients osteoarthritis (OA): 81, 122 joints; rheumatoid arthritis (RA): 45, 68 joints). Methods: We measured ROM from a week before to 6 weeks after TKA. Based on disease and on preoperative ROM, we classified subjects into OA and RA groups and three ROM (good, medium and poor) groups. Results: The good group showed good progress after TKA and the poor group showed little improvement. However, there were no differences in the restorative percentages of the OA and RA groups and of the three ROM groups. The percentage between the 1st and 2nd weeks was about 50% and between the 2nd and 3rd weeks was about 25% of the whole recovery. Conclusion: These findings indicate that is possible to predict the ROM by the degree of recovery between the 1st and the 2nd weeks after TKA.