Radiographic templating of total hip arthroplasty for femoral neck fractures.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of pre-operative digital templating to minimize complications including limb length discrepancy (LLD), intraoperative fractures and early dislocations in patients with intracapsular femoral neck fractures.

METHODS

We retrospectively compared 23 patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty (THA) for intracapsular femoral fractures with pre-operative digital templating and 48 patients without templating.

RESULTS

The mean post-operative LLD was significantly lower in patients who had pre-operative templating than in the control group (6.7 vs. 11.5 mm, p = 0.023). Only three patients (13 %) with templating had LLD greater than 1.5 cm, compared to the 15 patients (31 %) without templating (p = 0.17). In eight cases the final femoral stem size matched the templated size, while 19 patients were within two size increments. Complications included one dislocation and one intra-operative fracture in the control group.

CONCLUSION

The present study demonstrated that careful pre-operative planning may reduce LLD in patients undergoing THA due to intracapsular hip fractures.