An Effective Surgical Strategy for Anteromedial Osteoarthritis of the Knee with Simultaneous Popliteal Cysts Drainage

Abstract

Unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) is an established treatment option for anteromedial osteoarthritis, and popliteal cysts are a common finding in the knee among patients with chronic osteoarthritis pain. The two are so closely related that popliteal cysts are commonly discovered during the unicompartmental knee arthroplasty preoperative examination. However, only a few reports exist on the management and outcome of popliteal cysts in the patients receiving UKA for knee osteoarthritis (OA) and popliteal cysts. As such, it is crucial to evaluate different treatment strategies and their management of popliteal cysts. In this paper, we evaluate a surgical strategy for patients with knee anteromedial osteoarthritis and symptomatic popliteal cysts. These patients were treated with UKA and internal drainage of the popliteal cyst. The results shown here, spanning 1-year post-operation follow-up, demonstrated that UKA and internal drainage is an effective surgical protocol for treating anteromedial osteoarthritis with symptomatic popliteal cysts.