The role of osteotomy in advanced osteonecrosis of the femoral head in sickle-cell disease: a case report.

For young people, osteonecrosis of the femoral head (OFH) is one of the most debilitating complications of sickle-cell hemoglobinopathies. Management of advanced (Ficat and Arlet stage III or IV) OFH remains a challenging clinical problem: There is no ideal treatment, and management by total hip arthroplasty has a high failure rate. Consequently, the search continues for procedures that preserve the femoral head--such as vascularized and nonvascularized bone grafting and osteotomy. Various osteotomies have been used to try to salvage hips with stage II or III OFH. The Sugioka transtrochanteric rotational osteotomy is a technically demanding procedure with a variable success rate. Failure rates have also been variable for varus and valgus osteotomies after short-term follow-up. In this report, we present the case of a 13-year-old girl with stage III OFH caused by sickle-cell disease that had been successfully treated with a valgus-flexion osteotomy of the proximal femur, with 42-month postoperative follow-up. We suggest that stage III OFH in a young patient with sickle-cell disease can be successfully treated with corrective proximal femoral osteotomy.