Previous studies demonstrated that initial periprosthetic bone remodeling process was mainly completed in the first 12 postoperative months[4, 23]. Thus, the present study focused on one-year periprosthetic bone loss after THA, which we believed to be most evident and clinically relevant. As majority of the femoral stems for primary THA were designed as proximally coated[24], the changes of proximal periprosthetic BMD, namely Gruen zone 1 and 7 (Fig 1), were suggested to be more important than those of other Gruen zones. In consistent with our results, a previous study found that the decreases of the mean BMD in Gruen zone 1 and 7 varied from 5% to 10% during the first two years after THA[7]. As the mean changes of BMD in Gruen zone 1 (−0.033 g/cm2), Gruen zone 7 (−0.057 g/cm2), and total Gruen zones (−0.025 g/cm2) were larger than the LSC (0.012 g/cm2), we believe that our results represented a real biological change[25].
As we mentioned before, not all the patients experienced periprosthetic bone loss after THA[7, 8], while early medical intervention was recommended for all the patients underwent THA[5, 6]. Numerous studies demonstrated that the administration of bisphosphonate effectively inhibited postoperative periprosthetic bone loss from one to three years after the THA[13, 26-29]. However, there is no clear guideline regarding the indication of bisphosphonate treatment for patients underwent THA, especially for those without osteoporosis and osteopenia. Traditionally, clinicians used their individual or group evaluation of the risk of postoperative periprosthetic bone loss as the basis of making clinical decisions, which has been proven to be subject to biases[21]. A prediction model that allows estimation of postoperative periprosthetic BMD changes at perioperative period could enable efficient identification of patients who benefit more from bisphosphonate treatment and individualized decision-making. Such prediction model could also provide patients with reasonable expectations following surgery, which may improve satisfaction and patient compliance. However, no predictive tool that enables simplified, quantified individualized risk evaluations of postoperative periprosthetic bone loss on bias of numerous variables was available till now.
Nomograms have been widely used in predicting clinical outcomes after orthopedic surgery[15-17, 30]. Those prediction models that individualized the predicted outcome to specific patients’ characteristics performed better than simply relying on the average outcome[21]. To the best of our knowledge, our study represented the first time to use the nomograms in estimating the risk of postoperative periprosthetic bone loss. In the present study, variables (age, BMI, implant design, et al.) that have been reported to be potential risk factors of postoperative periprosthetic BMD decreases were retrospectively collected to create the nomograms[9-14]. As the bias-corrected C index of Gruen zone 1, 7, and total ranged from 0.696-0.785 in the present study, we proposed that those nomograms had relative strong discrimination[22]. Our models also demonstrated reasonable calibration, as shown in Fig 4-6.
We found that the most highly influential factors for the postoperative periprosthetic bone loss were primary diagnosis and BMD in the corresponding Gruen zones at the baseline, which was insistent with previous studies. There was larger periprosthetic BMD decreases following THA for femoral neck fracture than for osteoarthritis[11]. As we discussed in our previous study[14], the trabecular bone of proximal femur became granular shaped and was located mostly in the interface between the implant and host bone after implantation of the femoral prosthesis. Similar to autogenous cancellous bone grafting, the trabecular bone would be eliminated before the new bone formation, which we supposed to be a reasonable explanation[31]. As for other selected variables in the nomograms, previous study demonstrated that younger patients have more postoperative daily living activities and corresponding accelerated periprosthetic bone remolding[32]. Similarly, we also found that age was negatively related to the postoperative bone loss in Gruen zone 1, 7, and total zones. In consistent with previous studies[13, 33], preoperative hip BMD was found to be predictable of less postoperative periprosthetic bone loss in the present study. Similar to our results, the meta-analysis reported that patients using straight stems experienced less bone loss than those using anatomic designs at the 1-year time point[12]. Nevertheless, further studies with larger scale and specific stem design groupings are necessary to determine its’ clinical relevance, as cementless anatomic stems were reported to be with satisfied survival rate at 10 years (>95%)[34].
Our study was subjected to some limitations. Firstly, patients enrolled in the present study were relatively young (63, (51, 67) years, presented as median (Q1, Q3)). Further evaluation is needed before the application of those nomograms on older (>80 yrs.) or much younger patients (<40 years). Secondly, although the sample size of the present study has met the requirement of the statistics, we admitted that a large-scale sample is needed for building nomograms with higher discrimination and calibration. Besides, although the data was collected from a high-volume joint center that has a complex patient population, selection bias still existed due to the retrospective, single-center design. Lastly, external validation of the predictive model was not involved in the present study. As the sample size was relative small, we didn’t divide the data into training and test group in order to ensure adequate statistical power. Although the efficiency and accuracy of internal validation for nomogram has been proven in previous study[21, 35], we fully admit that external validation is necessary before generalized acceptance of these nomograms.