My mother has just had a hip replacement and after being given a 6 week recovery period is now unable to weight bear for 3 months as a result of a femural fracture during surgery. How common is this and why has it happened?

-- jenny veale (jenyellowhat@yahoo.co.uk), December 22, 2002

Answers

Hello Jenny My aunt had a total hip replacement about 10 years ago. I am a medical transcriptionist and have transcribed many operative reports on total hip replacements. I helped her find an orthopaedic physician that has a really good success rate in our area and I have the utmost faith in him.

He actually did fracture/crack her femur bone and had to put a "band" around the femur during the operative procedure. I have since learned that this is an unfortunate, however not very uncommon problem with total hip replacements. My aunt went on to heal just fine, but she was pretty upset in the beginning when she was told this had happened. Orthopaedic surgery is a rather "brutal" type of operation in that they have to use drills, even hammers, and unfortunately fracturing the femur can occur in some instances.

Hope your mother is doing better now and has a good end result from her surgery.

-- Velva Flick (strbryldy1@cox.net), January 20, 2003.

A small crack of the calcar (at the top of the femur is fairly common (2%)) and does not influence the course of recovery. A large femoral fracture is uncommon with the first hip replacement. It may occur if the bone quality is poor.

-- Marc W. Hungerford, M.D. (mhunger@jhmi.edu), February 05, 2003.

You should visit this website: http://www.niams.nih.gov/hi/topics/hip/hiprepqa.htm

-- Robert Toussie (Robert Toussie @aol.com), March 15, 2004.