Reducing Recurrent Knee Flexion Contracture by Correcting Leg Length Discrepancy After Total Knee Arthroplasty for OA

Plain-language summary

Moving one's joints through their full range of motion (ROM) is crucial for health and wellbeing. Those who are unable to do so have difficulty carrying out simple activities like walking or feeding themselves. Lost joint ROM is called a contracture. Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of arthritis. About a third of people with knee OA develop knee flexion contractures (KFlCs), the inability to fully straighten the knee. Having a KFlC before a knee replacement is a big risk factor for redeveloping one after the operation. Many people with a KFlC in the knee for surgery also have a KFlC in the other knee. The investigators believe that this non-surgical KFlC increases the risk of re-developing a KFlC in the surgical knee after surgery by encouraging bending of the surgical knee to avoid one leg being shorter than the other. No one has ever looked at whether fixing this leg length difference using a shoe lift would prevent this problem and there is little information to help design such a study. Here the investigators will see if testing shoe lift use for preventing KFlC is feasible. The investigators hypothesis is that a study evaluating the benefit of using a shoe lift to correct leg length difference in the non-surgical knee is feasible.

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