The treatment osteonecrosis of the femoral head remains uncertain. Core decompression is the standard technique for the early stages (ARCO I and II). A new alternative is core decompression combined with the insertion of an osteonecrosis rod. This implant is supposed to reduce the intraosseous pressure and to give additional structural support. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical and radiological outcome via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of this new technique. Twenty-three patients were included in this study. All patients underwent a core decompression combined with the insertion of an osteonecrosis rod.Introduction
Methods
The ability to predict load-bearing capacity during the consolidation phase in distraction osteogenesis by non-invasive means would represent a significant advance in the management of patients undergoing such treatment. Measurements of stiffness have been suggested as a promising tool for this purpose. Although the multidimensional characteristics of bone loading in compression, bending and torsion are apparent, most previous experiments have analysed only the relationship between maximum load-bearing capacity and a single type of stiffness. We have studied how compressive, bending and torsional stiffness are related to the torsional load-bearing capacity of healing callus using a common set of samples of bone regenerate from 26 sheep treated by tibial distraction osteogenesis. Our findings showed that measurements of torsional, bending and compressive stiffness were all suitable as predictors of the load-bearing capacity of healing callus. Measurements of torsional stiffness performed slightly better than those of compressive and bending stiffness.
