Timely Topics for Today's Arthroplasty Surgeon

Despite the high success of total knee arthroplasty (TKA), there remains a portion of patients who experience postoperative complications. Because of the associated increased morbidity and mortality, substantial efforts have been made to reduce the number and severity of these adverse events.

One area of major effort has been in preoperative patient optimization and surgical planning. In line with these efforts are the developments of newer surgical technologies that incorporate the patient's unique bony anatomy to plan preoperatively to help the surgeon intraoperatively. Therefore, included in this special section are studies comparing the effects of preoperative planning on operative times and postoperative complications, as well as the 1-year postoperative results from the patients who underwent robotic-arm assisted TKA. Also included in this section is an in-depth analysis on two unique patient subpopulations: those with fibromyalgia and those with rheumatoid arthritis. These two subpopulations are important to analyze as the number of patients with these diseases undergoing TKA continues to increase, and the native disease pathophysiology can directly impact upon postoperative outcomes. A systematic review on subchondral intraosseous injections for knee osteoarthritis is also included. Furthermore, the debate between cementless versus cemented TKA outcomes continues, so a study of the comparative propensity score matched analysis of postoperative infections between these two cohorts are included.

This special section focuses on several pertinent topics at the forefront of interest for today's knee arthroplasty surgeon. The reports provide a foundation on a variety of topics fundamental for optimal patient care. We, therefore, anticipate the readership to benefit and find these to be of great interest.