Bilateral Total Hip Arthroplasty: 1-Stage or 2-Stage? A Meta-Analysis

Total hip arthroplasty (THA) is one of the most successful orthopedic surgeries performed in the last 50 years. However, controversies still exist between conducting 1- or 2-stage bilateral THA.

Using PubMed, Ovid, Embase, and Cochrane library databases, we searched for papers written between January 1995 and October 2015 that contained the following search terms: "one-stage or two-stage" or "simultaneous or staged," and "hip" and "arthroplasty or replacement." A meta-analysis was conducted with the collected pooled data about major and minor systemic complications, surgical complications, and other perioperative data associated with 1- and 2-stage bilateral THA. Statistical analysis was performed by the Mantel-Haenszel method, and the fixed effect model was used to analyze data.

There were 13 studies with 17,762 patients who underwent 1-stage bilateral THA and 46,147 patients who underwent 2-stage bilateral THA. One-stage bilateral THA had a lower risk of major systemic complications, less deep venous thrombosis, and shorter operative time compared with 2-stage bilateral THA. There were no significant differences in death, pulmonary embolism, cardiovascular complication, infections, minor complications, and other surgical complications between procedures.

One-stage bilateral THA was superior to 2-stage bilateral THA in terms of major systemic complication, deep venous thrombosis, and surgical time compared with 2-stage bilateral THA. However, this study does not encourage performing 1-stage over 2-stage bilateral THA. Higher evidence level studies are necessary for further analysis.