Background: The Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) Complications Workgroup of the Knee Society developed a standardized list and definitions of complications associated with TKA. Twenty-two complications and adverse events believed important for reporting outcomes of TKA were identified. The Editorial Board of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research (®), the Executive Board of the Knee Society, and the members of the Knee Society TKA Complications Workgroup came to the conclusion that reporting of a list of TKA adverse events and complications would be more valuable if they were stratified using a validated classification system.
Questions/purposes: The purpose of this article was to stratify the previously published standardized list of TKA adverse events and complications.
Methods: A modified version of the Sink adaptation of the Clavien-Dindo Surgical Complication Classification was applied to the list of standardized TKA complications and adverse events.
Results: The proposed stratified classifications of TKA complications were reviewed and endorsed by the Knee Society.
Conclusions: Stratification of TKA complications will allow more in-depth and detailed outcome reporting for surgeons, hospitals, third-party payers, government agencies, joint replacement registries, and orthopaedic researchers. This improvement in reporting of TKA complications will also improve the quality of orthopaedic literature.