Cruciate Retaining compared with Posterior Stabilised Nexgen total knee arthroplasty: results at 10 years in a matched cohort

Introduction: Debate has persisted for many years about whether to sacrifice or replace the posterior cruciate ligament when performing total knee arthroplasty. A paucity of long-term follow-up studies comparing outcomes between cruciate-retaining and posterior-stabilised knees exist. We aimed to compare results at ten-year follow-up.

Methods: A matched paired study comparing a cohort of 107 Zimmer Nexgen® Cruciate Retaining (CR) patients with a cohort of 107 Nexgen Posterior-Stabilised (PS) knees matched for age, sex, body mass index and preoperative American Knee Society score was undertaken. All patients underwent independent clinical assessment and knee society scoring preoperatively and at 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 years postoperatively.

Results: Fifty-three patients (49.5%) in the CR group and 44 patients (41.1%) in the PS group were alive at 10-year follow-up. There were no significant differences between the CR and PS groups with regards to functional assessment (P = 0.95), overall range of movement (P = 0.46) or patient satisfaction (P = 1.0) at 10 years. However, there was a significantly better score improvement in range of movement in PS knees compared with CR knees (P = 0.027). There were six revisions (5.6%) in the PS group and 1 (0.93%) in the CR group (P = 0.12). Both CR and PS knees showed excellent survivorship with no significant difference at 10 years (P = 0.068).

Conclusions: There were no significant differences in functional score, overall range of motion or patient satisfaction between the Nexgen cruciate retaining and posterior stabilised total knee arthroplasty at 10-year follow-up. However, PS knees had a greater score improvement in range of motion compared with CR knees.