Lower Incidence of Dislocations after Total Hip Arthroplasty with Larger Diameter Heads in a Brazilian Population

Dislocation is the most common complication following a total hip replacement, and it’s the primary cause of early revision surgery. According to the English-language literature, the use of bigger diameter heads has shown to be an effective measure to prevent this complication. We retrospectively studied the dislocation rate in 1093 cases of primary total hip arthroplasties performed by our staff with 28mm, 32mm, and 36mm diameter heads. We observed a dislocation rate of 4,38% in the 28mm group, 1,73% in the 32mm group, and only 1,07% in the 36mm group. Our data suggested a statistically significant reduction (p<0,01) in the dislocation rate with the use of big heads (32mm and 36mm) when compared to 28mm heads, corroborating the literature findings.

Keywords: total hip arthroplasty, dislocation, big heads.