DEVICE AND METHOD FOR FITTING AN ARTIFICIAL KNEE JOINT USING UNIVERSAL ELECTRONIC TEMPLATES WHICH CAN BE ADAPTED TO ALL ARTIFICIAL JOINTS

摘要

Total knee arthroplasty is the standard treatment for advanced knee osteoarthritis. A new device and method of patient specific instruments (PSI) was first reported by Hafez et al 1-3 in 2004 & 2006 followed by commercialization by several implant manufacturers that produce PSI exclusively for their own knee implants. Therefore, these PSI are related only to their own implants, expensive and cannot be used as a universal or an open platform 4-6 . This invention is a device and a method for preparing a knee joint for a prosthesis in a patient undergoing TKA surgery for any knee implant (prosthesis). The device and the method are used in a universal and an open platform fashion for any currently available knee implant, all patient specific implants and any knee implants that could be produced in future. The device is a patient specific instrument, which is based on a method comprising of image based (CT, MRI or computed X-ray) 3-D preoperative planning to design the templates (PSI) that are used to perform the knee surgery for any knee implant in a universal and open platform fashion.