The effect of femoral anteversion on the clinical outcome after hip arthroscopy

In this paper, published in the journal Arthroscopy in January 2015, the investigators set out to compare the clinical outcomes after hip arthroscopy in patients with femoral retroversion, with normal femoral anteversion and with excessive femoral anteversion.
Patients who had undergone primary hip arthroscopy between August 2008 and April 2011, and in whom femoral version had also been measured by magnetic resonance imaging, were assessed. The patients were divided into three groups: those with femoral retroversion, those with normal femoral anteversion and those with excessive anteversion. Assessment was made using patient-reported hip outcome scores, together with a visual analogue scale for pain, which were recorded prospectively while their analysis was carried out retrospectively.
In total, 278 patients met the criteria for inclusion in the study. There were 25 patients in the femoral retroversion group, 219 with normal anteversion and 34 with excessive anteversion. Most tears of the labrum were seen between the 12 and 2 o'clock positions, while excessive femoral anteversion showed a lower rate of labral tears than retroversion and normal version. Postoperatively there was a statistically significant improvement compared with the preoperative state in all three groups of patients. There were no statistically significant differences in the postoperative state between the three groups of patients on assessment of the hip outcome scores.
The authors of the study concluded that, on the basis of the patient-reported outcomes and without taking the diagnosis and the treatments into account, the degree of femoral anteversion did not appear to affect the clinical outcome after hip arthroscopy.