Primary Total Knee Arthroplasty

The number of young patients affected by knee osteoarthritis is increasing exponentially, due to the increasing number of individual involved in physically demanding careers and sporting lifestyles. Many patients report increasing joint pain, stiffness, and loss of function leading to a reduction of their activities of daily living. Historically, the first approach to this degenerative disease is conservative: patient education, low-impact exercise, bracing, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) and intra-articular injections represent a well-recognized first-line treatment. Unfortunately, these conservative measures present a limited success rate and possible complications, especially in the presence of a high grade of the osteoarthritic disease. Modern biotechnologies have been recently proposed to address early knee osteoarthritis, especially in young and metabolically active patients. The use of own patient blood derivatives (as platelet rich plasma-PRP) is still under debate by the current literature, and the application of patient-specific mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is obtaining an increasing interest. When traditional and/or modern conservative treatments fail to improve patients' quality of life, surgical treatment plays a major role.