The Hip Replacement Type Choice: Presentation Of Difficulty And Responsibility About A Case

The surface replacement, metal on metal hip prostheses, experienced a renaissance in the 2000s. It has been recom-mended for use primarily in young, active patients due to expected theoretical benefits such as preserving femoral bone stock, maintaining hip joint biomechanics, reducing the risk of dislocation, and lacking polyethylene debris abrasion products. We present a patient who had resurfacing prosthesis because of bilateral femoral head necrosis due to long-term steroid treatment following double kidney transplantation at the age of 19. In the third postoperative year, progressive pain in both hips, psychiatric symptoms, and recurrent renal failure developed. We found extremely high serum Co-Cr levels, pseudotumor formation of the hip joint, extensive acetabular cysts, and significant thinning of the femoral neck, followed by a periprosthetic femoral neck fracture on one side. After removing the extensive tissue metallosis found during the revision surgeries, the surface replacement prostheses were replaced with cement -less ceramic-ceramic total prostheses. Following the revisions, local and psychiatric symptoms resolved, and serum Co-Cr levels normalized, allowing a third kidney transplant to be performed. The rapid improvement of our patient after prosthesis revisions serves as indirect evidence for the negative role of Co-Cr ions in both local and systemic tissue reactions, including damage to the transplanted kidney. Our case report shows that the use of metal on metal prostheses after organ transplantation should be avoided and simply setting up an indication for hip prosthesis and use the most modern type of prosthesis is inadequate. Depth analysis of the patient's ancillary conditions, medica-tions, co-morbidities are required to select the most appropriate prosthesis type, which is an unavoidable responsibil-ity of orthopedic surgeons.