Histological study of atraumatic periprosthetic fractures: does atypical periprosthetic fracture exist?

PURPOSE: Is it possible a correlation between some periprosthetic femoral fractures and atypical fractures? CASE: We present a case of a 77-year-old woman with atypical periprosthetic femoral fracture. The patient had a history of long-term bisphosphonate use. We performed an open reduction, a synthesis of the fracture and a histological exam. The patient stopped the bisphosphonate (BF) therapy. Three months later, before starting the teriparatide treatment, the patient had a re-fracture so we did a second osteosynthesis and began a teriparatide therapy. After six months, the radiography showed a bone healing at the fracture site. RESULT: The histological examination confirmed the diagnosis of atypical femoral fracture. CONCLUSION: At first, the fracture showed a delayed union which led to a new surgery, as often happens in BF-related atypical fractures. Appropriate treatment (BF suspension and teriparatide beginning) permitted fracture healing. The atypical characteristic of the fracture was confirmed by histological exam.Some periprosthetic femoral fractures in patients treated with BF, especially in long time therapies, should be suspected as atypical fractures and a specific medical treatment should be performed, as well as a correct surgical treatment.

Underdiagnosis of osteoporotic vertebral fractures in patients with fragility fractures: retrospective analysis of over 300 patients.

Osteoporosis (OP) is a silent disease unless a fracture occurs; it is a major health problem, mainly due to fragility fractures, that occur at vertebral and peripheral sites. Vertebral fractures (VF) are probably the most common fragility fractures, but they go often unrecognized. The main clinical symptoms of VF are acute and chronic back pain, spinal deformity, reduced mobility and impaired quality of life. They are frequently associated with other fragility fractures. We examined 478 patients at our outpatient clinic, who were referred for fragility fracture occurrence. The most common fragility fractures was hip fractures. However, after execution of spine X-rays in patients who had sustained hip fracture, we found that a large proportion of them had VF, which had not been reported in their medical history.

Three-dimensional parametric mapping in quantitative micro-CT imaging of post-surgery femoral head-neck samples: preliminary results.

Osteoporosis and pathological increased occurrence of fractures are an important public health problem. They may affect patients' quality of life and even increase mortality of osteoporotic patients, and consequently represent a heavy economic burden for national healthcare systems. The adoption of simple and inexpensive methods for mass screening of population at risk may be the key for an effective prevention. The current clinical standards of diagnosing osteoporosis and assessing the risk of an osteoporotic bone fracture include dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and quantitative computed tomography (QCT) for the measurement of bone mineral density (BMD). Micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) is a tomographic imaging technique with very high resolution allowing direct quantification of cancellous bone microarchitecture. The Authors performed micro-CT analysis of the femoral heads harvested from 8 patients who have undergone surgery for hip replacement for primary and secondary degenerative disease to identify possible new morphometric parameters based on the analysis of the distribution of intra-subject microarchitectural parameters through the creation of parametric images. Our results show that the micro-architectural metrics commonly used may not be sufficient for the realistic assessment of bone microarchitecture of the femoral head in patients with hip osteoarthritis. The innovative micro-CT approach considers the entire femoral head in its physiological shape with all its components like cartilage, cortical layer and trabecular region. The future use of these methods for a more detailed study of the reaction of trabecular bone for the internal fixation or prostheses would be desirable.

The hip prosthesis in lateral femur fracture: current concepts and surgical technique.

The third proximal femur fractures are divided into medial and lateral ones. For medial fractures already exists unanimity of thought for the choice of treatment that involves the prosthetic replacement of the hip joint in patients over 60 without indications to the synthesis. Regarding the lateral femur fractures this unanimity does not exist yet even if the majority of surgeons practice treatment with osteosynthesis. We want to highlight if there are any types of lateral fractures associated with patient's clinical condition in which it might be more useful to a prosthetic replacement with the aim of being able to allow a total load and earlier deambulation, reducing complications related to a possible patient immobilization.

Current medical treatment strategies concerning fracture healing.

The morbidity and socioeconomic costs associated with bone healing are considerable. A number of fractures are complicated by impaired healing. This is prevalent in certain risk groups such as elderly, osteoporotics, post-menopausal women, and in people with malnutrition. The biologic process of fracture healing is complex and impacted by multiple factors. Some of them, such as the nutritional and health conditions, are patient-dependent, while others depend on the trauma experienced and stability of the fracture. Fracture healing disorders negatively affect the patient's quality of life and result in high health-care costs, as a second surgery is required to stabilize the fracture and stimulate bone biology. Future biotechnologies that accelerate fracture healing may be useful tools, which might also prevent the onset of these disorders. We list the characteristics of the drugs used for osteoporosis, but we point out in particular the use of strontium ranelate and teriparatide in our clinical practice in elderly patients, especially females, who reported fractures with risk of nonunion. This medical treatment could impaired fracture healing however, most of the evidence is obtained in animal studies and very few studies have been done in humans. Thus one could hypothesize the possibility of a medical treatment both as a preventive and as support to the synthesis. However, no clinical studies are available so far, and such studies are warranted before any conclusions can be drawn. A positive effect of osteoporosis treatments on bone healing is an interesting possibility and merits further clinical research.

Disuse osteoporosis of the upper limb: assessment of thirty patients.

Osteoporosis is a multifactorial skeletal disorder characterized by the decrease of bone mass and the alteration of bone microarchitecture that leads to the increase of fracture risks. Traditionally, osteoporosis has been classified into primary and secondary osteoporosis. Primary osteoporosis refers to osteoporotic conditions which are not related to other chronic illnesses and is usually associated with aging and decreased gonadal function, such as decreased level of estrogen, whereas secondary osteoporosis is the type of osteoporosis caused by other health problems. Disuse is one of the many reasons inducing bone loss and resulting in secondary osteoporosis. The disuse osteoporosis appeared for the first time in the literature in 1974 when Minaire reported some histomorphometric analysis of iliac crest bone biopsies performed after a spinal cord injury. The most common skeleton sites in which disuse osteoporosis can be observed are knees and ankles. THERE ARE THREE CLINICAL SITUATION IN WHICH THIS DISEASE CAN BE OBSERVED: neurological or muscular disease that causes a pathological and prolonged immobilization. The most frequent is caused by a spinal cord injury, long term bed rest or space flight that causes the immobilization linked to changes in mechanical environment and experimental immobilizations in healthy subjects. Physical exercise is essential for increasing or maintaining bone mass and strength. In our study we wondered if the disuse of the upper limbs of a certain entity, lasting for a long time, can cause a decrease in BMD quantifiable with a densitometric evaluation of the distal radius and with an evaluation of the humeral cortical index such as to define a real osteoporosis from disuse. We analyzed 30 female patients without secondary osteoporosis older than 60 years: everyone underwent to vit D evaluation, densitometric exams of spine, hip and distal radius, Constant score and femoral and humeral cortical index evaluation. We observed that the distal radius BMD and humeral cortical index were worse in patients with low upper limb functionality than in patients with normal shoulder function. The results of this study suggest that humeral cortical index and radial BMD can be useful methods of upper limb bone density evaluation and that they can be useful to select a correct surgical treatment in orthopaedic and traumatologic diseases.

Clinical and surgical approach of severe bone fragility fracture: clinical case of 4 fragility fracture in patient with heavy osteoporosis.

An accurate diagnosis of osteoporosis and a proper treatment are today recognized to be the most important facts for prevention and for a correct arrangement and treatment of fragility fractures. In the text the Authors describe a case of severe osteoporosis aggravated by 2 femur fractures and 2 periprosthetic fractures occurred in 2 months. In such cases the orthopaedic surgeon needs to formulate first a clinical osteoporotic pattern, than its treatment together with a surgery suitable choice, that has to take into consideration of the bone structural characteristics. In the case described one can note that fractures healing occurred thanks to both an improvement in surgical techniques and antiosteoporotic pharmacological support; in the specific case the Authors used strontium ranelate for its osteoinductive capacity. In our opinion is crucial that the treatment used by orthopaedic surgeons is not related only to the "by-hand" treatment but take into consideration both the underlying disease and the possibility of positively affect bone healing with specific drug therapy.

Indices of risk assessment of fracture of the proximal humerus.

Osteoporotic fractures are now a social problem for incidence and costs. Fractures of the proximal humerus events are frequent and constantly increasing. It is estimated that they are 20% of all osteoporotic fractures. Bone densitometry in most cases underestimates the real humeral bone density.There is little information about osteoporotic changes in the proximal humerus and their association with the cortical thickness of the humeral shaft. The ratio between the thickness of the cortical and the total diameter of the humeral diaphysis is the cortical index. Fracture risk limit value is 0.231. Convinced of the need to quantify in a reproducible way the real local humerus bone density, we performed a comparative evaluation of bone density of the humerus and femur in patients admitted to our clinic for fractures of the humerus and femur.We evaluated 28 women treated surgically for a fragility fracture of the proximal humerus or femur neck in 2010. All cortical index obtained were lower than the limit for fracture risk set at 0.231, so the IC was more predictive of neck medial fractures of the femur than had DEXA and the U.S. The information about the cortical index may provide a simple way of determining the bone quality of the proximal humerus and of facilitating decision-making in the surgical treatment of patients with fractures of the humerus. So we want to emphasize the importance of therapy for osteoporosis even in patients with fractures of the proximal humerus, which often have not critical densitometric values of femur or column, but they are at risk of new fractures.

Humeral bone fragility in patients with shoulder prosthesis: a case of humeral periprosthetic refracture.

In recent decades there has been an increase in upper limb prosthetic surgery, primarily for the shoulder, for osteoarthritis disease and for traumatic pathology. It is occurring in parallel an increase in periprosthetic fractures of the humerus, although with less impact than other anatomical districts such as the hip.We report a case of humeral periprosthetic refracture in a 66-years-old female patient.The humerus bone quality is worse than in other districts in patient of the same age.The fragility humerus fracture are increasing, affecting relatively younger individuals than those with femoral neck fractures and represent an independent risk factor for the occurrence of subsequent fractures.Actually humeral BMD is underestimated by traditional densitometric evaluation techniques.