Editorial Comment

This year’s Knee Society Symposium represents a spectrum of the papers that were presented at the closed meeting of the Knee Society in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in September 2004, and the Annual Specialty Day in Washington DC in March of 2005. They represent the cutting edge as well as the tried and true in knee replacement surgery. This year’s John Insall Award paper is a very long-term followup on unicompartmental knee replacement written by O’Rourke et al. With the current resurgence of interest in this procedure we should look back to our successes and failures to tailor the operation for our patients in the best way. The Chitranjan Ranawat award this year is “In Vivo Knee Forces after Total Knee Arthroplasty” by D’Lima et al. As we offer knee replacement surgery to younger and more active patients it is imperative that we understand the forces on the implants used in order to be able to predict their longevity and to give reasonable expectations to the patients. Infection in a knee replacement remains a terrible complication. Early diagnosis is the key to hopefully successful treatment. Deirmengian et al received this year’s Mark Coventry award paper for their study, “White Blood Cell Gene Expression. A New Approach toward the Study and Diagnosis of Infection.” Several of the manuscripts this year relate to the patella. Is there a place for an isolated patellofemoral replacement? What are the results of a patellectomy after a knee replacement? We have all assumed that “stuffing” of the patellofemoral space has dire consequences. Is this really true? Concerns during revision knee replacement continue to plague orthopaedic surgeons. Several of the authors in this symposium address those problems, discussing how to achieve stability, how to increase motion, and how to choose whether to change all or just some of the components during a revision operation. The quality of the information presented at the closed meeting of the Knee Society and the Annual Specialty Day are the result of the excellent efforts of the presenters and the work of the Education Committee in screening, peer-reviewing, and vetting the oral and presentations and these printed manuscripts. Finally, all of it was brought together through the tireless energy and support of our Knee Society President, the indefatigable Merrill Ritter.