Of the 492 THA in patients younger than 37 years in the NAR, 101 THA (20.5%) were, according to the surgeon, operated because of developmental dysplasia of hip (DDH). Since 13 of these were bilateral THA, the number of patients were 88. Only 9 of these 88 DDH-patients were, however, reported to have NHI. This is surprisingly few, since their dysplasia should be anticipated to be rather severe. Does this indicate that the hip-screening for new-borns in Norway should be changed?
Purpose: The outcome of primary total hip arthroplasty (THA) after a previous paediatric hip disease was studied in data from the Norwegian Arthroplasty Register (NAR). Materials and Methods: 72,301 primary THAs were reported to the NAR for the period 1987 – February 2002. Of these, 5,459 (7.6%) were performed because of sequela after developmental dysplasia of hip (DDH), 737 (1.0%) because of DDH with dislocation, 961 (1.3%) because of Perthes’/ slipped femoral capital epiphysis (SFCE) and 50,369 (70%) because of primary osteoarthritis (OA). Prosthesis survival was calculated by the Kaplan-Meier method and relative risks for revision in a Cox model with adjustments for age, gender, type of systemic antibiotic, operation time, type of operating theatre and brand of prosthesis. Results: Without any adjustments the THAs for all three groups of paediatric hip diseases had 1.4 – 2.0 times increased risk for revision compared to that of OA (p<
0.001). Due to huge differences in the studied groups, a more homogenous subset of the data had to be analysed. In this subset, only THAs with well documented prostheses, high-viscosity cements and antibiotic prophylaxis both systemically and in the cement were included (16,874 THAs). In this homogenous subset, no differences in the survivals could be detected for DDH without dislocation and for Perthes’/SFCE compared to OA. For DDH with dislocation the revision risk with all reasons for revisions as endpoint in the analyses was increased 3.3 times compared to OA (p<
0.001), 2.7 times with aseptic loosening as endpoint (p<
0.01) and 10 times with infection as endpoint (p<
0.001). Conclusions: If well-documented THAs are used after paediatric hip diseases the results are just as good as after osteoarthritis, except for DDH with dislocation where increased revision risk is found.