Abstract
1. Ninety-one patients with Charnley stabilisation have been reviewed.
2. The patients' ages ranged from fifteen to seventy-eight, with an average of fifty-seven years.
3. Patients have been followed up for at least one year, the average period being almost three years.
4. Early complications included low grade pyrexia (33 per cent), femoral thrombosis (10 per cent) and pulmonary embolus (5 per cent).
5. Fifty-four per cent of patients had no backache, 36 per cent had slight and 10 per cent had troublesome backache.
6. Sound bony fusion occurred in 72 per cent, unsound union in 19 per cent and stress fracture in 9 per cent.
7. Stress fracture and unsound union occurred most frequently in those over sixty years of age.
8. In eighteen patients under fifty there was one unsound fusion and no stress fracture.
