Abstract

As health care costs increase, evaluating treatment methods in femoral neck fractures to determine the most effective treatment paradigm will become increasingly important. The current study compared two methods of treatment in similar cohorts of displaced femoral neck fractures. One hundred and twenty two patients were randomly assigned to two groups: In Group A, 62 patients were treated with a hemiarthroplasty. In group B, 60 patients were treated with dynamic screw fixation. Patients were evaluated at a minimum 3 year follow-up. Using the Matta functional hip score, 42% of group A and 70% of group B had good to excellent results. This difference was significant (p = 0.004). A significant agreement between physician assessment using the Matta score, and patient perception of outcome using the SF-36 scale was demonstrated (r = 0.64). No statistical difference between groups for revision surgery existed. Both physician based and patient based outcome scores favour retention and internal fixation of the femoral head in this cohort of patients at a short-term follow-up.