How PCL preservation affects the selection of femoral component size in total knee arthroplasty.

One hundred and fifty-seven patients, two-hundred and twenty-two knees, underwent total knee arthroplasties with Scorpio®. One hundred and eighteen knees underwent PCL-preserving procedures, and one-hundred and four knees underwent PCL-substituting procedures. For minimization of error, we performed soft tissue balancing and then bone cutting by a Linker system with certain posterior slope (< or = 3 °). We compared the sizes of the femoral components between the PCL-preserving and PCL-substituting procedures in order to determine how flexion gap differences affect femoral component sizes (Wilcoxon signed rank test).

With a certain minimal posterior slope (< or = 3 °), the PCL-preservation procedure led to selection of a 2.4 mm smaller femoral component than the PCL substituting procedure (p<0.05).

Selection of femoral component size was affected by PCL preservation, and the size of the femoral component was decreased in the PCL preservation group.