Knee Replacement Surgery

Knee replacement is a common surgical procedure for treating degenerative arthritis of the knee joint. In a typical knee replacement procedure, a diseased and/or damaged natural knee joint is replaced with a prosthetic knee joint. A typical knee replacement procedure involves resecting the distal end of the femur and the proximal end of the tibia for use in preparing implant prostheses for the femur and tibia. In a total knee replacement procedure, the distal end of the femur is resected to form a cavity that is prepared to receive a cavity of the femoral prosthesis. The proximal end of the tibia may also be resected to form a cavity that is prepared to receive a cavity of the tibial prosthesis. After a cavity for a prosthesis is created, the tibial and femoral cavities can be lined with a quantity of cancellous bone (e.g., bone marrow) removed from the resected proximal end of the tibia and distal end of the femur, respectively. The cavities may be packed with a quantity of cancellous bone harvested elsewhere in the patient's body (e.g., the patient's proximal end of the tibia).