Total ankle replacement: preliminary report of 3 cases.

Total Ankle Replacement has been quite limited used currently and ankle arthrodesis is still the treatment of choice for most disabling arthritic disease of the ankle because of the generally poor long term results of ankle replacement. In spite of its popularity, ankle arthrodesis has many disadvantages, including long immobilization, high pseudoarthrosis rate, and load shift with increased stress on the neighboring joints of ankle. Total ankle replacement may be tried on some selected cases, such as on older patients or on patients with bilateral ankle lesions, multiple joints involved arthritis, such as rheumatoid arthritis etc. This paper reports three ankle replacements with a two year follow up, and they all have encouraging short term results. In the future, the development of a more effective ankle replacement seems to be likely. But at the present time, only carefully choosing the available prosthesis and strictly selecting the indicated patient can make the total ankle replacement acceptable.