Abstract
Most orthopedic surgeons now accept that a bilateral one-stage total knee replacement for patients with both knee joints with severely rheumatoid arthrotic or osteoarthrotic changes provides several advantages, such as shorter hospitalization time, easier rehabilitation, and socioeconomic benefits such as lower medical costs. The first successive or simultaneous knee replacements of this kind were carried out in 1977. In this paper, we describe a new surgical method, simultaneous bilateral total knee replacement by one surgical team, which we carried out on 24 patients since the second half of 1994. Operating time was greatly reduced with this method, from an average of 182 min. to 106 min. in 24 cases, and to 95 min. in 14 cases, which used a stapler for skin closure.
