For the past half-century, the standard method for fixing femoral neck fractures — a common hip injury in the geriatric population — has been to repair the break with three cannulated screws, while the much newer Femoral Neck System inserts a fixed-angle, sliding-screw implant through a relatively smaller incision.
“For our patients who sustain femoral neck fractures, it’s really important to get it right to avoid unnecessary re-surgery, so we’re constantly searching for newer, better ways to treat this problem,” says Zachary Mallon, MD, orthopedic trauma surgeon with KP Napa-Solano. “When a new technology was released, we were excited to give it a try.”
To compare the two technologies, Dr. Mallon identified patients 60 and older in the Kaiser Permanente Hip Fracture Registry whose femoral neck fractures were repaired between 2017 and 2022. His study, published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, concluded that overall rates of 90-day events, surgical revision, and mortality were similar between the two methods.
“As a value-based organization, we are committed to identifying the highest standard of care, whether it is a time-tested approach or the latest innovation,” said Eric Au, MD, FACC, physician-in-chief of KP Napa-Solano. “Dr. Mallon’s study demonstrated that the two systems performed equally well and, perhaps surprisingly, that newer technology is not always better.”
On average, the newer Femoral Neck System takes 10 minutes longer and costs about three times more than using cannulated screws.
“Dr. Mallon’s study is a great example of how we can use patient data to better understand whether these new devices are really worth the additional cost and provide benefit for our patients,” says Betty Suh-Burgmann, MD, chair of the KP Northern California Central Research Committee.