VARUS OSTEOTOMY OF THE DISTAL PART OF THE FEMUR - A SURVIVORSHIP ANALYSIS

Varus osteotomy of the distal part of the femur is often the procedure of choice for the treatment of osteoarthrosis of the lateral compartm ent associated with genu valgum. We followed twenty-one knees (twenty patients) long term or until failure, At the most recent evaluation (a verage, 133 months; range, ninety-seven to 240 months), thirteen osteo tomies were still successful, seven had failed, and one patient (in wh om the. knee had remained functional) had died, Of tile seven failures , three occurred early (at twelve or twenty-four months) and four occu rred late (between seventy-two and ninety-eight months), The probabili ty of survival at ten years was 64 per cent (95 per cent confidence in ternal, 48 to 80 per cent), its determined with use of the Kaplan-Meie r method, We concluded that, with proper selection of patients, this p rocedure is effective for the treatment of gonarthrosis of the lateral compartment associated with valgus deformity.