A New Method for Defining Balance: Promising Short-Term Clinical Outcomes of Sensor-Guided TKA

Recently, technological advances have made it possible to quantify pounds of pressure across the bearing surface during TKA. This multicenter evaluation, using intraoperative sensors, was performed for two reasons: 1) to define balance 2) to determine if patients with balanced knees exhibit improved short-term clinical outcomes. Outcomes scores were compared between balanced and unbalanced patients. At 6-months, the balanced cohort scored 172.4 and 14.5 in KSS and WOMAC, respectively; the unbalanced cohort scored 145.3 and 23.8 in KSS and WOMAC (P < 0.001). Out of all confounding variables, balanced joints were the most significant contributing factor to improved postoperative outcomes (P < 0.001). Odds ratios demonstrate that balanced joints are 2.5, 1.3, and 1.8 times more likely to achieve meaningful improvement in KSS, WOMAC, and activity level, respectively. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).