Papers Presented at the Hip Society Meetings 2008: Editorial Comment

Abstract

The 2008 symposium of Proceedings of the Hip Society provides a wide-ranging mixture of issues relevant to hip surgery. These manuscripts represent topics presented and discussed at the 2007 Annual Closed Fall Meeting held in Pasadena, California and the 2008 Open Scientific Winter Meeting in San Francisco, California as organized by Lawrence D. Dorr, MD and myself. The classic paper by Merle d’Aubigne is a particularly interesting manuscript that is a very enjoyable study and should be read by all surgeons currently involved with hip arthroplasty. Readers might not be aware Merle d’Aubigne and his colleagues proposed not one, but three scoring systems: one in English and two in French. These differences are explained in the accompanying biosketch. As might be expected, new topics this year included papers on computer navigation systems for the hip and reports on the resurgence of hip resurfacing. In particular, the resurfacing papers focus on the importance of patient selection, surgical technique, and revision of failed resurfacing procedures. Several manuscripts related to long-term followup of cementless femoral components provide the baseline of performance expected with modern hip arthroplasty as we receive more information on the outcomes of resurfacing. The remainder of the symposium focuses on a large variety of topics related to surgical techniques and prosthetic design to optimize component position and avoid prosthetic impingement and optimal fixation. Additional topics included wear analysis with ceramic on crosslinked polyethylene, the presence of metal ions following metal-on-metal hip replacement, and the assessment of osteolysis by computed tomography. There were many papers on acetabular and femoral failures which included a previously unreported failure mode related to the use of lateralized acetabular liners. Acetabular revision techniques for isolated acetabular polyethylene exchange and the treatment of large acetabular bone defects and treatment of severe femoral bone loss are included. A paper on why revision hip arthroplasties fail yet again is particularly interesting. Finally, a group of papers describing perioperative complications of early mortality, deep periprosthetic infection, and treatment of periprosthetic femoral fractures completes the broad spectrum of topics for readers of this year’s symposium.