Comparison of healing of allograft/endoprosthetic composites with three types of gluteus medius attachment.

This study compared three methods of gluteus medius tendon attachment to an allograft/endoprosthetic composite of the proximal 25% of the femur in a canine model. The three methods were bone to bone, tendon to bone, and tendon to tendon attachment. In an in vivo study, 24 dogs were assigned to three groups of eight dogs each, and serial radiography and weight-bearing analyses were performed throughout the study. The dogs were killed at 6 months, and the specimens were tested in tension to failure and were analyzed histologically. In an in vitro study, each repair was done on six limbs, with a contralateral limb serving as a control for each. In these specimens, the bone to bone attachments were significantly stronger (99.1% of the controls) than the tendon to bone attachments (71.8% of the controls) and the tendon to tendon attachments (40.0% of the controls); there were no differences in tensile stiffness among the three types of attachment. By 6 months, the tensile strength of the tendon to tendon attachments increased significantly and that of the tendon to bone attachments decreased significantly. There were no significant differences in tensile strength among the three types of attachment. The tensile stiffness of the bone to bone attachments (91.0% of the controls) was significantly greater than that of the tendon to bone attachments (40.8% of the controls) but not significantly different from that of the tendon to tendon attachments (63.2% of the controls). The bone to bone attachment was associated with increased bone resorption, bone remodeling, and bone porosity, accompanied by thinner allograft cortices, when compared with the other types of attachment. In dogs with a bone to bone attachment, weight-bearing increased more slowly than in dogs with either of the other two attachments. These changes associated with the bone to bone attachment may merely be secondary to healing of the bone to bone attachment to the greater trochanter; therefore, they may only be temporary phenomena or they may be the portents for long-term complications. Longer term studies of at least 1-2 years must be performed before these questions can be answered.