Abstract
The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between postoperative bone marrow lesions (BMLs) and pain severity in patients undergoing open wedge high tibial osteotomy (OWHTO). We reviewed the patients undergoing OWHTO between April 2018 and April 2020. The demographic and clinical data of patients were collected. Clinically, VAS and Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) were used to assess pain level and functional outcomes of patients. The MRI Osteoarthritis Knee Score (MOAKS) was used to assess the total BMLs size in medial tibiofemoral (MTF), lateral tibiofemoral (LTF), and patellofemoral (PF) joints. 98 patients were enrolled in the study, including 57 male and 41 female patients. The VAS scores improved significantly from 6.1 ± 0.8 to 1.5 ± 0.9 (p < 0.001), and all subscales of KOOS improved significantly after surgery (p < 0.001). There were no significant differences between the pre- and postoperative total BML size of PF and LTF joints (p > 0.05). We observed significant improvements in the total BML size of MTF joint (p < 0.001). The VAS scores and KOOS pain scores improved better in patients without postoperative MTF joint BMLs (p < 0.001). Postoperative MTF joint BMLs were correlated with postoperative VAS (p < 0.001) and KOOS pain (p < 0.001). Our study demonstrates that MTF joint BMLs improved significantly after OWTHO. We confirmed that the presence of postoperative MTF joint BMLs are strongly associated with pain severity. The greater the improvement in postoperative MTF joint BMLs, the less pain. Our findings provide valuable understandings of OWHTO in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis (KOA) and potential future directions for KOA treatment approaches.
Highlights
Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a common chronic disease that causes pain, stiffness, and functional disability [1,2,3,4], among which, pain is the major cause leading individuals to seek medical care [5,6,7,8]
Many studies have demonstrated that knee pain could be relieved by open wedge high tibial osteotomy (OWHTO) in case of malalignment [9,10,11,12]
There were no significant differences between smoker and nonsmoker regarding the total bone marrow lesions (BMLs) size in PF joint, lateral tibiofemoral (LTF) joint, and medial tibiofemoral (MTF) joint (p > 0:05)
Summary
Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a common chronic disease that causes pain, stiffness, and functional disability [1,2,3,4], among which, pain is the major cause leading individuals to seek medical care [5,6,7,8]. Many studies have demonstrated that knee pain could be relieved by open wedge high tibial osteotomy (OWHTO) in case of malalignment [9,10,11,12]. Many studies have shown that bone marrow lesions (BMLs) are strongly associated with pain in KOA [5, 13,14,15]. A few studies have demonstrated that BMLs of the knee were significantly improved after OWHTO [16, 17].
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