Description
Studies reporting on alignment strategies focus on intended alignment, rather than assessing achieved alignment. This study sought to examine alignment strategy in “reverse”, by determining if achieved postoperative 3D alignment would lead to a difference in Patient Reported Out- come Measures (PROMs), and whether the achieved alignment could be broadly categorised by an accepted alignment.
The main finding was that achieved alignment does not consistently match accepted alignment strategies, and confers no benefit to clinical out- come when the native anatomy is most closely approximated, nor result in poorer outcomes in outliers. We recommend 3D post- operative imaging to allow reporting of achieved alignment to facilitate a more valid analysis for comparison in future studies assessing the impact of alignment on outcomes.
