To review prospectively collected data on patients undergoing femoral revision arthroplasty for failed cemented or cementless primary stems. All patients undergoing primary and revision joint replacement surgery at our institution are prospectively entered into a database which includes history and physical examination, radiology, WOMAC and SF-36 scores. These investigations are repeated 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and yearly thereafter at each patient visit. This database identified all patients undergoing femoral revision arthroplasty over the last 10 years. There were a total of 231 patients with 248 revision procedures performed. There were 127 female and 104 male patients and the mean age at the time of revision surgery was 69.4 years. Twenty-two of these patients had had at least one prior revision operation on the index hip. Thirty hips were treated with a cemented Echelon stem and 218 treated with a cementless Echelon stem. Of the 248 hips 14 patients were lost to follow-up (14 hips) and 9 patients (9 hips) are deceased. The average follow-up was 5.9 years. Of the 225 hips remaining in the follow-up series there was a single case of aseptic loosening confirmed radiologically. Twenty-one hips were diagnosed with infection (9.3%); 6 of those patients had had at least one prior revision procedure and 4 additional patients had a prior diagnosis of infection. Therefore, 10 of the 21 hips were either definitely or probably infected at the time of their revision operation on which we are reporting. Nine patients (4%) had multiple dislocations post-operatively. These were patients who had undergone multiple revisions or whose primary revision operation was for instability. An additional 18 patients (8%) had a single dislocation treated by closed reduction requiring no further treatment. There were 6 hips with intra-operative fracture requiring immediate re-revision plus fracture fixation and a further 12 hips (5.3%) who sustained a peri-prosthetic fracture some time after their revision procedure. Despite the number of complications the majority of patients required no further surgical treatment. Eleven hips (4.8%) required re-revision of the femoral component. Therefore the overall survival rate at 5.9 years of the Echelon revision stem was 95.2%.Materials & Methods
Results
Open reduction and internal fixation of tibial plateau fractures is traditionally performed through an anterior, anterolateral or an anteromedial approach and more recently a posteromedial approach. These approaches allow satisfactory access to the majority of fracture patterns with the exception of posterolateral tibial plateau fractures. To improve access to posterolateral tibial plateau fractures, we developed a posterolateral transfibular neck approach that exposes the tibial plateau between the posterior margin of the iliotibial band and the PCL. The approach can be combined with a posteromedial and/or an anteromedial approach to the tibial plateau. Since April 2007, we have used this approach to treat nine posterolateral tibial plateau fractures. All cases were followed up prospectively. Fracture reduction was assessed on radiographs, CT scans and arthroscopicaly. Maintenance of fracture reduction was assessed with radiostereometric analysis. Clinical outcomes were measured using Lysholm and KOOS scores. Anatomic or near anatomic reduction was achieved in all cases. All fractures healed uneventfully and no loss of osteotomy or tibial plateau fracture reduction was identified on postoperative plain X-rays. In the cases monitored with radiostereometric analysis, the fracture fragments displaced less than 2 mm during the course of healing. All osteotomies healed either at the same rate or quicker than the tibial plateau fractures. There were no signs and no symptoms of lateral or posterolateral instability of the knee during or after the healing of the osteotomy. There were no complications related to the surgical approach, including the fibular head osteotomy. All wounds healed uneventfully and there were no symptoms related to the CPN. The patient reported outcomes recorded for this group at six months, using the Lysholm score (mean 71, median 77, range 42–95), compared favourably to the entire cohort of 33 patients treated operatively at our institution for a tibial plateau fracture and followed up prospectively during the same time period (mean 64, median 74, range 20–100). The posterolateral transfibular approach for lateral tibial plateau fractures is an approach that should be considered for a certain specific pattern of fractures of the lateral tibial plateau. Our preliminary results demonstrated no complications through the learning curve of the development of this technique.
