The clinical epicondylar axis is not the functional flexion axis of the human knee.

Abstract

The functional flexion axis (FFA) is the principal axis around which the knee moves and thus, by definition, does not move in vertical displacement relative to the tibia. The transepicondylar axis (TEA) has been reported to coincide with the FFA. If that is not true, the TEA should show vertical displacement during motion, and this hypothesis was investigated. Three-dimensional knee kinematics of 20 healthy volunteers were determined during a squatting motion via a 3-dimensional to 2-dimensional image registration technique by calculating the vertical displacement of the clinical epicondylar axis (CEA) through the full range of motion. From 0° to 90° knee flexion, the average vertical displacement of the lateral end of the CEA was <3 mm, whereas that of the medial end was large (7.6 mm). The large vertical displacement of the medial end of the CEA suggests that the CEA is not the FFA. This finding implies that the CEA may not be an appropriate axis for a TKA prosthesis having a "single radius" design. Level IV.