The results of technetium 99m-sulphur-colloid scans performed at the Los
Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center and Rancho
Los Amigos Hospital to assess the vascular status of the femoral head after
sixty-five displaced and thirty undisplaced fractures of the neck of the
femur and forty-four traumatic hip dislocations as well as in fifty
patients with idiopathic ischemic necrosis of seventy femoral heads were
evaluated by histological and clinical examination after follow-up of two
years or more. The accuracy of the scan as corroborated by the histological
findings and clinical results was 95 per cent. The method is safe,
reliable, accurate, and simple in contrast to other methods which have
disadvantages related primarily to technical complexities, difficulty in
interpretation, and expense.