Morphometric Study of the Proximal Femur Extremity in Brazilians

Abstract

Brazilian populational aging besides higher life expectancy has increased the incidence of proximal femoral fractures. Treatment of those fractures uses implants which are based in measurements performed in caucasians, including the 135 degrees cervical-diaphyseal angle. Knowing femoral morphometry allows evaluating implants adequability. We performed our study using 110 Brazilian human femurs (49 right and 61 left). We excluded from the study: bones submitted to osteosyntesis, to prosthetization or those showing abnormalities or malformations which could affect its structure and shape. Bones were submitted to roetgenographic analysis and the images were scanned and transferred to personal computer. Measurements were obtained by AutoCad software and statistics by Graph Pad Instat software. Our data were compared using Kolmogorov-Smirnov and "t-test". The following parameters were evaluated: femoral head diameter (FHD), femoral neck length (FNL), femoral neck width (FNW), femoral axis length (FAL), off-set (OS) and cervicaldiaphyseal angle (CDA). The findings were as follows (mean ± SD), right and left sides respectively: FHD, 31.1 ± 2.7 mm and 30.8 ± 3.0 mm; FNL, 30.1 ± 4.3 mm and 30.5 ± 4.1mm; FNW, 30.96 ± 2.94 mm; FAL, 98.2 ± 5.9 mm and 97.4 ± 7.13 mm; OS, 42.6 ± 6.1 mm and 42.0 ± 5.6 mm; CDA, 132.0° ± 7.2 ° e 131.8° ± 5.2°. Median cervical-diaphyseal angle, obtained in this study presented some variation, which was not statistically significant. Linear data are constant, according to other studies, except the off-set, which has varied.