RESUMO
The story of the total knee arthroplasty begins in the last century. But in 1971, Gunston shows the way of the modern knee arthroplasty and creates the concept of unconstrained arthroplasty. The indication of the total knee arthroplasty should be precise and rigorous. It's not possible to describe all the situations, where a total knee arthroplasty is indicated or not, but the clinical signs could be summarized in pain, stiffness, deformation with or without instability. We observed 10% of postoperative complications; most of them are secondary, but the infections and loosening remain the principal problem in 2% and in 5% of cases, respectively. If the results are now quite the same to those of total hip arthroscopy by survivorship analysis, the indication and the choice of the total knee prosthesis should be passed on a reflection, where the clinical and functional evaluation are the most important.
