Dr. Sotereanos also will present an instructional course on this technique at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery annual meeting March 19. Necrosis of the hip joint can be difficult to diagnose and often is accompanied and confused with back pain, knee pain, stiffness and immobility of the hip joint and groin pain with weight bearing, according to Dr. Sotereanos. It can occur in one or both hips. In 20 to 30 percent of cases, the cause of the necrosis remains undetermined. With the development of better diagnostic imaging technology over the past 30 years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of accurately diagnosed and reported cases of hip joint necrosis.
Surgeons also restore blood flow by transferring veins and arteries with the fibula.
The entire surgery generally takes about six hours to complete. Following surgery, patients use crutches for about six months. Only a few surgeons nationwide are performing the technically complex procedure and UPMC, whose surgeons have performed more than 260 of these procedures, currently boasts the second largest number of cases in the world.