Comparison of robotic‐assisted versus conventional unicompartmental knee arthroplasty for the treatment of single compartment knee osteoarthritis: A meta‐analysis

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The robotic-assisted unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) is proposed to improve the accuracy of component positioning. METHODS: We conducted a literature search in Medline, Embase, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library until April 2020. RESULTS: Our meta-analysis included 10 articles, involving 1231 knees. Our meta-analysis demonstrated that the robotic group had significantly better results in outliers of limb alignment (p < 0.001) and outliers of tibial alignment (p < 0.001). No statistical differences were found in the American Knee Society Score (p = 0.63), range of motion (p = 0.93), pain (p = 0.27), rate of revisions (p = 0.73) and rate of complications (p = 0.67). CONCLUSIONS: Robotic-assisted UKA has better component position accuracy compared with conventional UKA. But there was no significant difference in clinical results. In order to further evaluate the utility of robotic-assisted UKA, long-term follow-up randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are needed, as well as studies to evaluate the correlation between postoperative alignment and long-term clinical results.