Abstract
Introduction:
Implant dislocations are often caused by implant or bone impingement, and less impingement is critical to prevent dislocations. Several reports demonstrated that greater femoral offset delayed bony impingement and led to an improved range of motion (ROM) after THA. Therefore, an increase in the femoral offset may improve ROM and decrease implant dislocation. The aim of this study was to clarify the effect of the femoral offset in avoiding component or bony impingement after total hip arthroplasty (THA).
Methods:
Seventy-eight patients underwent THA with a Pinnacle cup and Summit stem (DePuy). Intraoperative kinematic analysis was performed with a navigation system, which was used to obtain intraoperative range of motion (ROM) measurements during trial insertion of stems of 2 different offset lengths with the same head size. Further, ROM was also measured after actual component insertion.
Results:
Maximal ROM was independent of the femoral offset of the stem in each patient (Figure 1). Further, we measured the intraoperative maximal ROM corresponding to high offset stems of 2 different lengths (stem sizes 1–3; + 6 mm, stem sizes 4–9; +8 mm), and compared the maximal ROMs between the standard- and high-offset stems. There were no statistically significant differences (Figure 2). These results indicate that an excessive offset length of the stem may not affect ROM. We also analyzed the correlation between femoral offset length and ROM, and found that the range of external rotation was significantly greater in patients with greater femoral offset (RR = 0.36, P = 0.02) (Figure 3). However, we could not show any correlation for the ROM values in the other planes of motion.
Discussions:
Summit stem is available in 9 different sizes with standard offset lengths ranging from 36.0 mm to 44.0 mm. The average offset of Summit stem was larger than other stems. These differences in offset length could be the reason why the high offset stem did not change maximal ROM in our study. Further, the summit stem employs 2 different types of high offset lengths (+6 mm and +8 mm). We did not find any difference in maximal ROM even after using the +8 mm high offset stem. Our results indicated that even the Summit standard offset stem might have enough femoral offset to avoid implant/bone impingement. However, several reports showed that increasing stem offset increased the bending moment on the prosthesis and increased the strain in the medial cortex, and may lead to early failure of the femoral component.
Nevertheless, selection of the offset stem should be performed carefully to prevent offset complications.
