Osteonecrosis: avoiding total hip arthroplasty

Osteonecrosis of the femoral head afflicts approximately 20,000 new patients per year, at an average age of 38. Of the patients seen in our institution, 25% are <25 years old. Without treatment, most of these patients can be expected to need a total hip arthroplasty. Joint-preserving procedures have a significant failure rate, and some have significant morbidity. It is desirable to avoid or delay total hip arthroplasty because most patients with osteonecrosis outlive the current state-of-the-art prostheses. Four issues need to be weighed to arrive at a reasonable algorithm for the preservative treatment of osteonecrosis: i) patient risk factors, ii) morbidity of the proposed procedure, iii) size of the lesion, and iv) stage of the lesion. All of the issues must be considered to make sense out of a complex clinical situation.