Comparison of gait following Mechanically Aligned and callipered restricted Kinematically Aligned Total Knee Arthroplasty - A Randomized Controlled Trial

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a debilitating condition which alters the biomechanics of the gait cycle. End stage patients need to be managed by Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) to alleviate pain and improve gait dynamics. There are various types of coronal alignments proposed for TKA- Mechanical alignment (MA-TKA) and restricted kinematic alignment (rKA-TKA) being one of them. While MA-TKA restores the knee into a rectus alignment, rKA-TKA aims to restore the native alignment of the original knee within the acceptable limits. The literature has shown that MA-TKA gives the patient a gait different from the normal gait pattern. The aim of the study is to ascertain if rKA-TKA is able to give better gait dynamics to the patient as compared to MA-TKA.

The null hypothesis of the study is that there is no difference in the gait pattern between the two groups of TKA.

This is a single centre randomised controlled trial comparing the dynamic gait biomechanics between two different types of Total Knee Arthroplasties- MA-TKA and rKA-TKA. Blinding of the patient and observer will be done. The primary outcome of the study are maximum knee flexion in swing phase and knee adduction moment in stance phase at 6 months post-operative period. The secondary objectives are comparison of other temporal, spatial, kinematic and kinetic gait variables and patient reported outcome measures at 6 months post-operative period.