Capitellocondylar total elbow replacement. A long-term follow-up study.

Fifty-one capitellocondylar elbow replacements were inserted in forty-one patients between 1976 and 1986. Thirty-nine patients had rheumatoid arthritis and two had traumatic osteoarthrosis. The average age of the patients at the time of the operation was fifty-six years (range, twenty-one to seventy-seven years). Thirty-one patients who had thirty-nine retained elbow prostheses had an average length of follow-up of 6.5 years (range, two to thirteen years). Flexion improved an average of 20 degrees; extension, 4 degrees; pronation, 22 degrees; and supination, 36 degrees. Relief of pain was complete in 85 per cent of the thirty-nine elbows, and in 15 per cent there was only mild pain. Noteworthy postoperative complications in the original fifty-one elbows included infection in four elbows (8 per cent), dislocation in three (6 per cent), and ulnar neuropathy in sixteen (31 per cent). Three elbows were revised: one for a humeral fracture, one for recurrent dislocation, and one for aseptic loosening. Aseptic loosening was evident on radiographs of two elbows; one patient was completely asymptomatic, and one had mild pain with deformity. The Souter zonal radiographic assessment system for identification of radiolucencies at the bone-cement interface was utilized; there was no significant difference in radiolucencies between ulnar components backed with metal and those that were not backed with metal. Kaplan-Meier cumulative survivorship analysis demonstrated that a functional prosthesis was retained in 88 per cent of the elbows at 1.4 years postoperatively and in 83 per cent at 5.5 years.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)