BACKGROUND: Studies have shown that the femoral bowing angle is strongly associated with the distal femoral valgus angle, so the distal femoral valgus angle can vary with the angle of the femoral bowing. If the preoperative plan is inadequate or not aware of the problem, it will affect the postoperative lower limb alignment and the position of femoral prosthesis and affect clinical outcomes. Either conventional or computer-assisted navigation surgery can often be used in patients with total knee arthroplasty for this type of end-stage knee osteoarthritis. OBJECTIVE: To review the causes, definitions and effects of the presence of the femoral bowing, and compare the intraoperative osteotomy and postoperative outcomes in the two surgical methods for knee osteoarthritis with femoral bowing in total knee arthroplasty. METHODS: A computer-based search of CNKI, PubMed, and WanFang was performed for retrieving articles concerning the application of arthroplasty in the end-stage knee arthritis with femoral bowing published from August 1997 to May 2018. The keywords were “knee arthritis, femoral bowing, total knee arthroplasty/replacement, computer-assisted navigation, limb alignment” in Chinese and English, respectively. After initial screening of titles and abstracts and exclusion of irrelevant articles, 51 eligible articles were included in final analysis according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: (1) The incidence of femoral bowing in Asians is higher than that of Western Europeans and other Westerners, and vitamin D and calcium intake should be strengthened. (2) There is a strong correlation between the femoral bowing and the distal femoral valgus angle. Conventional cutting angle may affect the lower limb alignment and prosthesis placement. (3) Compared with the conventional method, computer-assisted navigation total knee arthroplasty can more accurately reconstruct the postoperative lower limb alignment and accurately place the position the prosthesis. (4) In the two surgical procedures, navigation has more advantages in rebuilding the coronal lower limb alignment, but it cannot bring satisfactory clinical outcomes. Before degeneration, it has its own deformity, and then it returns to the neutral position, and may not get satisfied clinical outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]