This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Patients had high functionality, low pain scores at 10 years with uncemented bipolar radial head replacement
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
SAN DIEGO — In the 7 years since patients with a bipolar radial head replacement system were followed up at 3 years postoperatively, no significant changes in component position and minimal arthritic progression were observed, according to a presenter at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting.
Robert A. Sershon, MD, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, presented the results of the Katalyst bipolar radial head replacement system (Integra) that he said has a neck that telescopes smoothly, allows the radial head to pivot and includes polyethylene in the design.
“We had no significant difference in patient reported outcomes, no significant loss of range of motion from 3 to 10 years in all patients,” Sershon said.
In all, 16 patients of those patients studied had clinical and radiographic follow-up 10 years after treatment with the uncemented system with some patients having up to 12 years’ follow-up.
Most of the patients were treated due to acute fracture or fracture-dislocation, while the other indication for radial head replacement in this series was post-traumatic arthritis. All patients were assessed for elbow range of motion, elbow stability, implant loosening, joint osteolysis or lucency and joint degeneration for the radiographic results.
The investigators also looked at proxy for joint stability in the patients’ elbows based on how much of the head of the implant protruded from the bone, where less than 0.3 meant implant stability.
“We had excellent results in 10 years with this design,” Sershon said.
Implant survival overall was 95%, and there was one failure, he said. Lucency was seen on the radiographs related to all the implants, sometime observed in all seven zones analyzed, “but if you look at our data it did not worsen,” Sershon said. – by Susan M. Rapp
Reference:
Cohen MS, et al. Paper #111. Presented at: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting; March 14-18, 2017; San Diego.
Disclosure: Sershon reports no relevant financial disclosures.