New MRI Aids Hip Repair

For people of a certain age, especially women, a broken hip is regarded as a death sentence. More than 340, 000 people experience a broken hip in the U.S every year. The most common type of hip fracture is known as a femoral neck fracture where the area just below the ball of the hip’s ball-and-socket joint is damaged.

Individuals with this type of injury are at high risk of complications because the blood supply to the fractured portion of the bone is often disrupted. The decreased blood supply may lead to non-healing or osteonecrosis.

Now researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in collaboration with GE Healthcare have devised a special type of MRI that can show a detailed image of a fracture repair without the distortion caused by metal surgical screws that can mess up pictures from standard MRIs. This specially sequenced, contrast-enhanced MRI can enable doctors to identify potential problems so they can intervene early and prevent further damage to the joint.

“This new MRI greatly improves the visualization of bone and soft tissue when there is metal in a joint, such as the screws used to repair a hip fracture, ” explained Hollis G. Potter, M.D., Chairman of the Department of Radiology and Imaging at HSS.

With respect to femoral neck hip fractures, doctors said that this is the first MRI that can “see through” surgical screws to detect early signs of osteonecrosis, so that interventions can be initiated before there is further damage, such as collapse of the bone or osteoarthritis.

The new MRIs revealed decreased blood flow to the injured areas and osteonecrosis in 80% of patients in the superomedial quadrant of the femoral head. However, despite these findings, patients demonstrated excellent radiographic and functional outcomes. Researchers attributed this to a surgical technique that entailed stabilizing the broken bones with screws and restoring the fracture to the correct alignment and normal anatomical position.