Perioperative Outcomes of Hemiarthroplasty Versus Total Hip Arthroplasty for Geriatric Hip Fracture: The Importance of Studying Matched Populations

Geriatric femoral neck fracture is a common injury for which hemiarthroplasty (HA) or total hip arthroplasty (THA) may be considered in select patients. As prior database studies comparing these have not used propensity matching, which is a robust statistical method of controlling for potentially confounding variables, unmatched and matched methodologies are contrasted in the present study.

Patients aged ≥70 years who underwent HA or THA for hip fractures were identified from the 2012-2015 National Surgical Quality Improvement database. Propensity score 1:1 matching was performed. Differences in rates of 30-day postoperative adverse outcomes were compared using multivariate logistic regression for unmatched and matched cohorts.

In total, 15,558 patients (14,403 HA and 1155 THA) were evaluated. Although multivariate outcomes for the unmatched populations were different for blood transfusion, mortality, minor adverse events, major adverse events, and reoperation, multivariate outcomes for matched populations only differed for blood transfusion (odds ratio 0.6 for HA vs THA, P < .001). Of note, although readmissions were similar for the two groups, patients undergoing THA had a 5.4% greater rate of perioperative readmission due to dislocation.

Geriatric patients undergoing HA and THA for hip fracture were compared with and without propensity matching. Once matching was performed, the only differences in outcomes between the two groups were a lower transfusion rate among the HA group and a greater readmission rate due to dislocation among the THA group. This suggests that either procedure can be safely considered if found to be advantageous from a longer-term outcome perspective.

Level III, retrospective comparative study.