This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Study: Consider distal femur arthroplasty to treat periprosthetic fracture in patients with osteopenic bone
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
For patients with periprosthetic femur fractures, researchers found that primary reconstruction using open reduction, internal fixation preserves bone stock, but primary distal femur arthroplasty may be a better choice for patients with osteopenic bone or who are at a higher risk for nonunion.
“[Our] study demonstrates that periprosthetic femur fractures after [total knee arthroplasty] TKA treated by plating techniques fail most frequently due to nonunion, followed by infection, plate loosening and refracture,” Antonia F. Chen, MD, MBA, and colleagues wrote in the study. “Distal femoral arthroplasties are an alternative treatment for periprosthetic fractures that fail due to extensor mechanism disruption, infection and dislocation.”
Chen and colleagues examined results from 13 patients who failed open reduction, internal fixation (ORIF) and then underwent distal femur arthroplasty (DFA) to 35 patients who underwent primary DFA, according to the abstract. They found there were significantly more surgical procedures for the patients who underwent ORIF first, and that the cause for revision was nonunion (53.8%), infection (30.8%), loosening (7.7%) and refracture (7.7%), according to the abstract. For patients who underwent primary DFA, extensor mechanism disruption (8.3%), infection (5.6%) and dislocation (2.8%) were the causes of failure.
Disclosure: Chen receives royalties from Slack Incorporated. Tarkin is a paid consultant for Zimmer and receives research support from DePuy Synthes. Crossett is a paid consultant for and receives royalties from Johnson & Johnson.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts