Introduction for Hip Society Proceedings

Abstract

The Thirty-first Annual Open Meeting of the Hip Society and the Ninth annual collaboration between the Hip Society and the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons was held in New Orleans, LA on February 8, 2003. This year’s President of the Hip Society was Miguel Cabanela and this year’s President of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons was Douglas Dennis. The program was designed to update orthopaedic surgeons on advances and controversies in reconstructive hip surgery in adults. The field continues to make rapid advances and also to face new challenges. The Presidential guest speaker was Laurent Sedel from France who spoke on Ceramic Prosthesis Fractures: History and Present Status. As one of the surgeons with the greatest experience with ceramics in orthopaedics, he provided a unique long-term perspective on ceramics in hip arthroplasty. Four papers were honored with three Hip Society Awards. Noble et al received the Aufranc Award for an excellent anatomic study of developmental hip dysplasia, based on CT scanning. They documented the relationship between the severity of dysplasia and anatomy of the femur and acetabulum. Barrack et al and Bragdon et al shared the Charnley Award for two related animal studies that showed the potential value of osteoinductive recombinant proteins to restore acetabular bone stock and improve implant fixation in the setting of acetabular bone loss. Finally, Roeder et al received the Stinchfield Award for a report on the effect of patient age, gender, underlying diagnosis, and Charnley class on the time course and magnitude of change in functional parameters after THA. The first session of the meeting focused on implant fixation and started with a question: Are we really doing any better than Sir John Charnley? The Iowa experience with Charnley THAwas presented as a benchmark, followed by papers on polished tapered cemented stems, uncemented tapered stems, uncemented fully porous-coated stems, and uncemented sockets. All of these newer methods, at least with successful implant designs are producing midterm, and in some cases longer-term, results that rival the excellent results reported by Charnley. The next session was entitled Wear in THA: A Critical Up-to-Date Look at Alternative Bearings. This group of papers began with a critical review of current methods to measure PE wear. New information on in vivo wear of cross-linked PE bearings measured by RSA, and new data on metal-on-metal implants and ceramic-on-ceramic articulations all were presented. Although each of these newer bearings has potential strengths and weaknesses, the emerging clinical data on all three bearings presented at this meeting provide reason for optimism. Controversies and Hot Topics in Reconstructive Hip Surgery was the title of the next session. Topics included mini-incisions for THA, surface replacement, robotics and computer-assisted CLINICAL ORTHOPAEDICS AND RELATED RESEARCH Number 417, pp. 17–18 B 2003 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.