Results of Total Cementless Hip Joint Arthroplasty with Taperloc Stem.

Background: The aim of this paper is to present the results of hip joint arthroplasty with the use of the Taperloc stem.

Material And Methods: The study group consisted of 117 patients (75 women and 42 men) who underwent 121 hip joint arthroplasties with Taperloc stems. Mean age of the patients at surgery was 53.8 years (range: 2475 years). Mean follow-up period was 159.5 months.

Results: Pre-operative Merle d'Aubigne-Postel scores (modified by Charnley) of the study group were poor in all patients. Mean post-operative improvement was 6.6 points. Excellent results were obtained in 86 cases, good in 19, fair in 9 and poor in 7 cases. Poor results were always associated with implant component loosening: 5 cases of acetabular cup loosening, 1 case of a loosened stem and 1 septic loosening of the entire endoprosthesis. In six cases (4.9%), patients developed heterotopic ossification. According to the Kaplan-Meier estimator, 10 years' survival probability was 94.21% for the whole endoprosthesis and 98.34% for the stem alone.

Conclusions: 1. Our follow-up data covering a mean period of over 13 years showed that the use of the Ta-perloc stem substantially reduces hip pain and results in a good lasting clinical outcome. 2. With good surgical technique and in the absence of complications, the risk of aseptic loosening is minimal.