Systematic Review of Surgical Treatment for Elbow Medial Compartment Osteoarthritis in Dogs

Introduction: Elbow osteoarthritis is common, especially in the medial compartment and can be debilitating to dogs. Surgical strategies to alleviate pain and improve mobility in these dogs include Canine Unicompartmental Elbow surgery (CUE), Proximal Abducting Ulnar Osteotomy (PAUL), Sliding Humeral Osteotomy (SHO), Total Elbow Arthroplasty (TEA), arthrodesis, and therapeutic arthroscopy. The purpose of this systematic review was to determine the evidence for the most effective surgical treatment for elbow OA with the least harm.

Materials and Methods: A literature search was completed using CAB Abstracts, PudMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science on August 19, 2024, for articles describing surgical treatments for elbow osteoarthritis and medial compartment disease in dogs. Duplicates were removed, inclusion criteria were applied, and the resulting articles were evaluated for level of evidence and combinability by success rates and major complications.

Results: Out of the 1,231 unique articles, fifteen were evaluated based on the inclusion criteria with five (33.3%) prospective studies, eight (53.3%) retrospective studies, and two (13.3%) case series studies. Overall, articles could not be combined with success rates due to disparate outcome measures. CUE had the highest level of evidence for success (91–98%) with the second-best number needed to harm (NNH, 7.6). SHO had the next best evidence with 43 and 82% success and 9.5 NNH.

Discussion/Conclusion: There is low evidence for any of the procedures However, CUE has the best evidence for long-term improvement.

Acknowledgment

None.

Publication History

Article published online:
15 July 2025