Femoral Impaction allografting is now an established method in revision hip arthroplasty where there is a deficiency in bone stock. Most experience of this technique has been in conjunction with a cemented collarless, polished, tapered (CPT) stem. We conducted a retrospective study into the clinical and radiological results of 67 consecutive patients with an average of 62 months (36–108 months) follow-up. In all cases, Impaction bone grafting was performed using a transtrochanteric approach and cemented Charnley and Elite Plus stems.

In our series no femoral component has been revised. The overall subsidence was 2.2 mm. 57 hips (85%) showed subsidence of 4 mm or less. However two patients showed massive subsidence of greater than 10mm, both with associated osteolysis and radiolucent lines. In addition, one stem showed a progressive varus position and debonding of the cement-metal interface. Analysis of the bone allograft showed evidence of incorporation in 56 (84%) of patients. The Merle D’Aubigne-Postal clinical score increased from an average of 8.3 pre-operatively to 15.3 at the last review. 60 patients (89.5%) complained of no or slight pain.

There was a 10% re-operation rate due to complications. Three patients sustained periprosthetic fractures around the tip of the prosthesis, all successfully treated with a plate. Three patients suffered recurrent dislocation, two needed revision of the acetabula component. Two patients needed trochanteric wires removed for persistent pain.

Direct comparison of different prostheses is difficult due to many confounding variables. However the medium term results of our study are comparable to the results reported using the Exeter and CPT stems.