Vascular injuries during total hip arthroplasty (THA) are rare but when they occur, have serious consequences. These have traditionally been managed with open exploration and repair, but more recently there has been a trend towards percutaneous endovascular management.

We performed a systematic review of the literature to assess if this change in trend has led to an improvement in the overall reported rates of morbidity and mortality during the last 22 years in comparison with the reviews of the literature published previously.

We found a total of 61 articles describing 138 vascular injuries in 124 patients. Injuries because of a laceration were the most prevalent (n = 51, 44%) and the most common presenting feature, when recorded, was bleeding (n = 41, 53.3%). Delay in diagnosis was associated with the type of vascular lesion (p < 0.001) and the clinical presentation (p = 0.002).

Open exploration and repair was the most common form of management, however percutaneous endovascular intervention was used in one third of the injuries and more constantly during the last 13 years.

The main overall reported complications included death (n = 9, 7.3%), amputation (n = 2, 1.6%), and persistent ischaemia (n = 9, 7.3%). When compared with previous reviews there was a similar rate of mortality but lower rates of amputation and permanent disability, especially in patients managed by endovascular strategies.

Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2015;97-B:1447–55.

Introduction

In January 2000, the Bone and Joint Decade was formally launched at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. The goal was “to improve the health-related quality of life for people with musculoskeletal disorders throughout the world”. They aimed to do this, in part, by “raising awareness of the growing burden of musculoskeletal disorders on society”. The Bone and Joint Decade has 63 supporting governments, over 700 supporting government and non-government organisations and a budget in the millions. It was the largest musculoskeletal health promotion campaign in history.

Background

There is much research on metal on metal hip resurfacing arthroplasty (HRA) but few studies have reported the outcome with respect to implant characteristics from non-specialist centres.