What’s New in Hip Arthroplasty

The discipline of total hip arthroplasty has undergone an exciting evolution over the past decade. Tremendous work has been done with regard to long-term clinical follow-up, outcome measurement, new biomaterials, improvements in surgical techniques and implant designs, recognition and treatment of complications, cost containment, epidemiology, and biomedical engineering. Over the past year (April 2003 to April 2004), sixty-four papers related to total hip arthroplasty were published in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American Volume), ninety-eight were published in the Journal of Arthroplasty, and forty-five were published in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. In addition, there were 140 presentations on this topic at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (held in March 2004), thirty-eight presentations at the annual meeting of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (held in November 2003), forty-five presentations at the fall meeting of The Hip Society (held in September 2003), and forty-eight presentations at the spring meeting of the Hip Society (held in March 2004). We have organized the information selected from these 478 studies into eight sections: (1) primary total hip arthroplasty (stem), (2) primary total hip arthroplasty (cup), (3) bearing surfaces, (4) revision total hip arthroplasty (stem), (5) revision total hip arthroplasty (cup), (6) complications, (7) outcome and practice management, and (8) minimal incision total hip arthroplasty. It is our hope that this information will have a meaningful impact on the orthopaedic surgeon’s daily clinical practice.