A nature friendly knee arthroplasty for prayer and meditation in Asiatic lifestyle

Abstract

Introduction: India is a country where many religions coexist together. Prayer & meditation form an integral part of Indian lifestyle. Also 90% of India’s population lives in the rural areas. Medial compartment osteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis in India. Total knee replacement has longer rehabilitation time, morbidity and cost. In addition, it doesn’t allow squatting and sitting cross legged. With rise in unicondylar knee replacements for medial compartment osteoarthritis, patient’s satisfaction is much higher.Hypothesis of this paper was to investigate whether sitting cross-legged easily on floor for prayer and meditation, contributed to higher levels of patients satisfaction in unicondylar knee replacement significantly.Material & Methods: this retrospective study was done with study population of 36 patients of which, 33 knees of unicondylar knee replacement (mean age 61.7) and 25 knees of total knee replacement (mean age 63.5). We used modified Oxford knee score to compare the functional outcome and Likert scale for grading the patient’s satisfaction level. Results: study outcome after unicondylar knee replacement was extremely satisfactory for all patients measured with modified Oxford knee score and is better than total knee replacement. The mean Oxford score for 33 knees with unicondylar knee replacement is 47.18 and for 25 knees with total knee replacements is 46.35. But viewing by satisfaction index point of view, patients are highly satisfied with unicondylar knee replacement because of ability to squat and sit cross-legged used for praying and meditation and other social habits.