| Gender Knee Replacement... "What's new in orthopedics is frequently not what's best." ......................................................William H. Harris - Mass General, Boston |
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Recently you may have heard thru the news media of a “new knee” called a gender or female knee. A company has been marketing this “gender knee” as a knee replacement that better fits female anatomy. It states that female knees are narrower than male knees and therefore women would recover quicker and have better long term results with a narrower knee. They further state that “we have been putting men’s shoes on women’s feet”, or performing women’s knee replacements incorrectly. This statement couldn’t be further from the truth. By a slim majority, women have slightly more knee replacements, in general, than men. The majority of knee replacement companies have therefore designed their implants to be compatible with women’s and men’s knees. Most implants produced in the United States have multiple size options to fit the smallest female knees to the largest male knees and every size in between. Over the last 30 years as knee replacement surgery has evolved, many factors that determine the success or failure of a knee replacement surgery have been defined. The majority of these factors are related to component alignment, implant fixation, soft tissue balancing and the prevention of infection and blood clots. The width of the femoral component has never been associated with the success or failure of a knee replacement surgery. The gender knee is mostly a marketing idea to bring attention to knee replacement surgery and the many size options now available to surgeons to fit a growing population of patients with arthritis. |