Two Year Clinical Outcomes of Total Hip Arthroplasty Are Not Dependent on Femoral Head Composition.
Academic Article
Overview
abstract
BACKGROUND: Assessment of clinical outcomes and patient quality of life after total hip arthroplasty continues to grow in importance with the focus on how bearing surfaces affect long-term survival, wear, and cost. Further, as quality measures have become incorporated into reimbursement, there is a need to quantify factors which may influence these outcomes. Currently, there is a paucity of literature regarding the effects of the femoral head composition on clinical outcomes or quality of life. QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: We sought to determine if any difference in quality of life measures could be detected in patients treated with total hip replacement implanted with cobalt-chrome (CoCr) versus ceramic femoral heads at 2-year follow-up. METHODS: We compared the hip disability and osteoarthritis outcome score (HOOS) and EuroQOL (EQ5D) scores of a matched set of patients that underwent primary total hip arthroplasty with highly cross-linked polyethylene (HXLPE) and a single implant system consisting of either a metal or a ceramic femoral head. RESULTS: Clinical outcomes and quality of life improved for both groups after hip replacement surgery. Patients with a ceramic head showed greater improvement than those with a metal head in HOOS pain and EQ5D VAS scores by a statistically significant margin (p = 0.0417 and 0.019, respectively), but the differences between the HOOS and EQ5D VAS scores (3.4 and 0.04, respectively) do not demonstrate a clinically significant difference. CONCLUSIONS: We found that the femoral head composition has no effect on clinical outcomes or patient quality of life at 2 years.
