Total hip arthroplasty in the ankylosed hip. A ten-year follow-up

Eighty total hip arthroplasties in seventy-four patients who had had either a spontaneous or a surgical ankylosis (arthrodesis) of the hip were evaluated at nine to fifteen years (average, 10.4 years) after the total hip replacement. There was only one failure in the twenty hips of the fifteen patients who had had a spontaneous ankylosis. In contrast, twenty (33 per cent) of the sixty hips of the sixty patients who had had a surgical ankylosis had complications that were associated with the arthroplasty. Of these twenty hips, mechanical loosening developed in eleven; infection, in eight; and recurring dislocation, in one. Failure of the total hip arthroplasty was more common (p less than 0.05) in the patients who had had a previous surgical attempt at arthrodesis and in the patients who were fifty years old or less at the time of the arthroplasty. The risk of failure was not related to the length of time that the hip had been ankylosed.