Purpose: The management of severe femoral bone loss associated with hip infection is a major problem in joint replacement surgery. Femoral megaprostheses have been rarely reported in reconstructive procedure for this complex condition. The aim of the study was to evaluate clinical results observed after such uncommon reconstruction in our case series and in a similar group of patients extracted by literature review.
Methods: We evaluated clinical outcomes and eradication of sepsis in five patients who underwent femoral revision with modular femoral resection stems at our institution, and we reviewed the literature about this topic. In our case series, the femoral bone loss was grade III-B in three cases and grade IV in two cases according to the Paprosky classification. One patient was operated with one-stage revision, and four patients were operated with two-stage revision. The mean age was 72 years (range: 60 to 81 years), and the mean time of follow-up was 62 months (range: 36 to 82 months).
Results: We observed sepsis eradication in four out of five patients in our series, and clinical results were satisfactory with a mean Harris Hip Score of 74 points (range: 46 to 95 points). Cumulative results obtained considering our series and data obtained by literature review showed a mean Harris Hip Score of 75 points (range: 42 to 95 points) in patients able to walk and an overall incidence of recurrent infection in 33% of patients. Complications were observed in 8 out of 20 patients (dislocation, 6 cases; greater trochanter displacement 2 cases; and transient sciatic palsy, 1 case).
Conclusions: Revision with megaprostheses in case of infected total hip arthroplasty with severe femoral bone loss have a high risk of complication and should be carefully evaluated and used in selected patients when other surgical procedures are not feasible.