Clinical Research on Foot & Ankle
Open Access

Review Article

TNK Ankle-The Ceramic 2-Component Total Ankle Prosthesis

Shinichi Kosugi*1, Akira Taniguchi2, Kiyonori Tomiwa2, Hiroaki Kurokawa2 and Yasuhito Tanaka2
1Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Nara Prefectural Mimuro Hospital, Nara, Japan
2Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Nara Medical University, Nara, Japan
Corresponding Author :	Shinichi Kosugi Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Nara Prefectural Mimuro Hospital 14-16, 1-chome, Mimuro Sango-cho, Ikoma-gun Nara, 636-0802, Japan Tel: +81-745-32-0505 E-mail: skosugi@naramed-u.ac.jp
Received March 03, 2014 ; Accepted May 26, 2014; Published June 02, 2014
Citation: Kosugi S, Taniguchi A, Tomiwa K, Kurokawa H, Tanaka Y (2014) TNK Ankle-The Ceramic 2-Component Total Ankle Prosthesis. Clin Res Foot Ankle 2:141. doi:10.4172/2329-910X.1000141
Copyright: © 2014 Kosugi S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
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The TNK ankle is a total ankle prosthesis which was first used in clinical settings in 1980, and which has been used in Japan for more than 30 years. The TNK ankle is only major model made from alumina ceramic materials, and is a 2-component type prosthesis with semi-constrained sliding surfaces. Due to various improvements in the surfaces in contact with the bone, the TNK ankle has consistently shown stable clinical outcomes, mainly in patients with osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), although a loosening or sinking of the prosthesis has been found in some cases. In this review, we review the features and clinical outcomes of the TNK ankle, as well as the recently reported biomechanical research studies; in addition, we describe future perspectives pertaining thereto.

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