Introduction: Surgical treatment of femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) is becoming a worldwide current practice. We analyse if clinical and functional results are influenced by preoperative degenerative hip changes.

Materials and Methods: 107 FAI operated hips in 105 patients with a mean follow up of 3,1 years (range: 31 to 53 months) were evaluated and divided into 3 groups according to Tönnis Scala for preoperative radiological degenerative hip stages: group A 32 patients Tönnis 0, group B 61 Tönnis 1 and group C 24 Tönnis 2. Impingement test, Merle D’aubigné and WOMAC scores were assessed 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months and every year after operation. SPSS 10.0 software used (SPSS INC, Chicago, Ill) was used for statistical analysis and comparisons were performed by means of chi-squared test; p< 0,05 was considered to be significant.

Results: After 3 months impingement test improved significantly in 30 cases Tönnis 0 (93,75%; p=0,012) and 58 cases Tönnis 1 (95,08%; p=0,008), whereas in Tönnis 2 it was observed only in 14 cases (58,3%; p=0,354). At this point no statistical difference was observed at the subsequent three years (p=0,273, p=0,377, p=0,334). Merle D’Aubigné and WOMAC scores improved significantly at the latest follow-up in groups A (91,3%, p=0,010) and B (93,4,%, p=0,024). However in group C only 45,8% of the cases improved significantly (p=0,383).

Conclusions: Surgical results of FAI differ in patients with Tönnis stage 0 and 1 when compared with Tönnis 2. Thus it seems to be reasonable to recommend symptomatic patients surgical treatment of FAI as early as it appears.

Introduction and purpose: Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) has become a well-recognized pathological condition over the last few years and different authors have published good results obtained after surgical treatment using osteoplasty. In this study we analyze the clinical and functional results seen in the first one hundred patients subjected to osteoplasty using a minimally invasive anterior approach.

Materials and methods: We analyzed the first 107 patients treated with a mean follow-up of 26 months (range: 6–41). They are assessed on a scale we drew up ourselves that takes into account the Impingement Test, the Merle D’Aubigné scale and the WOMAC score at 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months and once a year. Results are classified according to these variables as excellent, good, fair and poor and are analyzed using the chi-square test (SPSS software, p< 0.05). Excellent and good results are considered satisfactory, the others are not.

Results: At 1 year satisfactory results are seen in 91.3 % of Tönnis 1 cases and 93.4% of Tönnis 0 cases; these results are maintained during the second year in 85.1% (p=0.375). On the other hand, in Tönnis 2 cases, only 55.3% good results are seen at 2 years. These differences were significant (p< 0.017).

Conclusions: Treatment of impingement by means of femoroacetabular osteoplasty using our minimally invasive approach results in a high proportion of satisfactory outcomes, especially during stages 0 and 1. However, such is not the case in stage Tönnis 2 cases. Therefore, it is advisable to use this procedure in symptomatic patients during the incipient stages of the condition.