Background: Recently, with the advent of improved metal-on-metal prostheses, total hip resurfacing has emerged as a viable arthroplasty option. However, it remains controversial whether this procedure should be used in patients with osteonecrosis when the femoral resurfacing component is cemented onto dead bone. The purpose of this study was to analyze the clinical and radiographic outcomes of metal-on-metal total hip resurfacing arthroplasty in patients with osteonecrosis of the femoral head. In addition, this group was compared with a matched group of patients who were diagnosed as having osteoarthritis.

Methods: Forty-two osteonecrotic hips that were treated with a metal-on-metal total hip resurfacing arthroplasty were studied. They were matched by gender, age, prosthesis, surgeon, and surgical approach to forty-two osteoarthritic hips that were treated with the same metal-on-metal prosthesis. In the osteonecrosis group, there were twenty-five men and eleven women, and in the osteoarthritis group, there were twenty-eight men and thirteen women. The mean age at the time of surgery was forty-two years. Patients were followed both clinically and radiographically for a mean of forty-one months.

Results: The clinical outcomes were similar for both groups, with a good or excellent outcome in thirty-nine hips (93%) with osteonecrosis and a good or excellent outcome in forty-one hips (98%) with osteoarthritis. In each of the two groups, there were two failures that required conversion to a standard total hip arthroplasty. Survivorship curves were similar for the two patient groups.

Conclusions: The short-term results for metal-on-metal total hip resurfacing for this challenging patient population with osteonecrosis were excellent and comparable with those seen in patients with osteoarthritis. We await long-term results to see if these early results are maintained.

Level of Evidence: Prognostic Level II. See Instructions to Authors on jbjs.org for a complete description of levels of evidence.