WHiTE Five
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A feasibility study to compare contemporary un-cemented hemiarthroplasty with the standard-of-care cemented hemiarthroplasty for the treatment of displaced intracapsular hip fractures.
IRAS ID
200990
Contact name
Matthew Costa
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 28 days
Research summary
Hip fracture is a serious injury which mostly occurs in older patients. In the UK there are ~60,000 hip fractures every year. A hip fracture is a potentially catastrophic event; approximately 30% of patients will die during the first year following this injury and those that survive will have a significant reduction in their quality of life.
The most common type of hip fracture is treated with a partial hip replacement or hemi-arthroplasty. The hemi-arthroplasty can be fixed to the patient’s thigh bone with or without the use of ‘bone cement’. Cement is the current standard technique, but there are some risks with bone cement which could be avoided by using ‘uncemented’ implants. These risks, which include an increase in mortality during the first 24 hours after surgery, have prompted a recent alert from the National Patient Safety Agency.
However, traditionally the outcomes with the early types of uncemented implants were inferior to the cemented implants currently used. Since these studies were done, there have been significant improvements in uncemented implant technology and the current, limited evidence suggests that these modern implants may be as good as the cemented implants but without the risks of using cement.
The research needed is a trial to compare cemented with modern uncemented hemi-arthroplasty implants. In order to find out which type of implant is better for patients with hip fracture, we first need to undertake a smaller study. This will establish the feasibility of running such a trial and gain vital data to determine how many participants we will need to recruit in the full trial to answer this important research question.
REC name
Wales REC 5
REC reference
16/WA/0351
Date of REC Opinion
2 Dec 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion