Analysis of Standard Versus Barbed Sutures in Primary Total Knee Arthroplasty.

Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) rates have consistently risen in recent years, and demand is expected to increase by over 600% in the next 20 years. Decreasing reimbursement and available resources make tangible advances in surgical efficiency and outcomes essential in meeting current and future demand. Closure time may be one of the best targets in the push to reduce operative time and cost while increasing operative productivity. Optimizing lengthy, multilayered wound closures in TKA is a promising means for improving both efficiency and outcomes by potentially decreasing wound closure time, reducing postoperative wound complications, and improving cosmetic outcomes.

Running knotless suture technique utilizing barbed suture technology has recently been shown to reduce wound closure time in both total hip and knee arthroplasty in a small, prospective, randomized clinical trial. Barbed suture technology has also facilitated rapid closure and soft-tissue repair in plastic-surgery literature. Very few studies have reported on the use of barbed suture technology for multilayered closure in orthopedics. As a pilot study, the investigators performed a retrospective analysis of consecutive cohorts before and after changing to barbed suture. The investigators believed that our published slight improvement in efficiency and cost savings of a barbed suture closure was underestimated due to the retrospective nature of our pilot study and the investigators therefore elected to proceed forward with a prospective randomized trial. Additionally, in the investigators pilot study we found a potential trend toward lower wound complications with the barbed suture and we wanted to see if this would be borne out in a prospective randomized trial.

The investigators hypothesized that a prospective study would show that barbed sutures would be more efficient, have comparable complication rates, clinical outcomes, and cosmesis outcomes versus traditional knotted sutures when used in the closure of primary TKA. Specifically, the investigators hypotheses were as follows: multilayered closure in TKA with barbed suture would be associated with (1) shorter closure times; (2) lower cost; (3) similar closure related perioperative complication rates; and (4) similar Knee Society, cosmesis, and patient satisfaction scores when compared to standard knotted suture closure.