- Researchers say a corrective surgery known as high tibial osteotomy (HTO) could help people avoid total knee replacement.
- HTO is usually performed on younger adults in the hope of delaying knee replacement.
- Researchers said HTO can sometimes completely relieve knee problems and eliminate the need for replacement surgery.
Could a long-used corrective surgery delay the need for a total knee replacement in younger adults?
A study published in Canadian Medical Association Journal by researchers at Western University in Canada suggests that high tibial osteotomy (HTO) could do just that.
“We had seen that (patients who had HTO) were doing quite well,” Codie Primeau, MSc, BSc, the study’s lead investigator and a research student at Western University, told Healthline. “A lot of them do not ever need a total knee replacement (TKR) going forward.”
HTO is a surgery usually performed on adults up to their early 50s who have some degenerative arthritis in their knee.
The procedure has been known as a stop-gap for future knee replacement surgery, but the timing on that offset had yet to be pinned down.
For someone with degeneration, particularly when combined with some bowleggedness, this procedure takes pressure off the damaged side of a knee by wedging open the upper portion of the tibia to reconfigure the knee joint.
This straightens out the joint, shifting pressure away from the damaged side of the knee, slowing down the progressive damage in that knee.
While it was long considered a way to put off a total knee replacement for as long as a decade, this study showed that the benefits could last even longer.
Source: healthline