Knee Operation

Uni-Condylar Knee Replacement Surgery (partial knee surgery)

Your surgeon will make an incision and manage the soft tissues around the knee. The surgeons will make sure that all of your ligaments are in tact and shave (resect) a small amount of the tibial bone, the size of your resected tibial plateau will be measured in order to fix an appropriate sized cemented or uncemented tibial tray. These tibial trays can either be plastic or a combination of plastic and metal.

The femoral condyle will be sized and then chamfered in order to allow implantation of an appropriate sized metal component, this can be fixed by using either bone cement or uncemented technology. Your surgeon will make sure that your knee is balanced by putting an appropriate size piece of plastic between the femoral component and the tibial tray.

Total Knee Replacement surgery

Your surgeon will make an incision and manage the soft tissues around the knee. The surgeon will either leave all ligaments in tact or may remove the posterior cruciate ligament, dependent on what type of implant he/ she decides to use. T

A small amount of bone will be shaved (resected) from either the femur (thigh bone) or tibia (shin bone). It is down to surgeon preference which bone is treated first. With the tibia, around 8-12mm of bone is resected, dependent on the severity of the bone loss and deformation. The surgeon will then measure the size of the resected area at the top of your shin bone (known as the tibial plateau) in order to fix an appropriately sized implant, which can be made of metal, plastic or a combination of both; and can be fixed with either with bone cement or using uncemented technology (only possible with metal implants, not plastic).

Some tibial trays are just made of plastic and incorporate the plastic (often called an insert) that is necessary for the femoral metal component to articulate with. Some tibial trays are made of metal and also incorporate the plastic insert, most commonly surgeons use a metal tray into which a separate piece of plastic fixed onto the top of the metal surface.

The end of your femur (thigh bone) will be measured and a specific cutting block will be used to cut the bone in order to allow the correct sized metal implant to be fixed to the end of your bone, using either bone cement or uncemented technology.

A piece of plastic will be inserted between the femoral component and the tibial tray (if it isn’t already part of the tibial tray), this is essential for joint to articulate. The surgeon will make sure that your knee is balanced correctly and may or may not replace the back of your patella (knee cap). This down to surgeon choice.