A radical approach to minimally invasive total hip replacement: surgical technique and pre-clinical test data

Currently total hip replacement surgery using minimally invasive techniques is a fast developing field. However, all reports concern adaptations of surgical techniques with adapted instruments using conventional implants. These conventional implants limit the minimal invasiveness to some extent. In this paper a new system is reported featuring a new surgical approach, new instrumentation and a new implant design. The purpose of this study was to introduce the system and to assess the feasibility of the system in terms of stability, range of motion and wear characteristics. The pre-clinical tests indicated that the factor of safety for this type of design is smaller than for conventional implants. However, the results show adequate performance of the system, which suggests that further development and testing is justified to advance the system for clinical use.