The Lefèvre retentive cup is a salvage solution for total hip replacement at high risk of dislocation. Only a few studies have reported the medium or long-term survival; most often, only a small number of patients were included in these studies. This led us to conduct a retrospective analysis of a large population to determine: 1) the 10-year survival rate after primary or revision arthroplasty, 2) the complication rate.

The dislocation rate is<5% for revision arthroplasty and<2% for primary arthroplasty.

This single-center retrospective study included 466 consecutive total hip replacements performed with the Lefèvre retentive cup with a 12-year theoretical minimum follow-up (1/1/1998 to 31/8/2006). There were 257 indications for primary arthroplasty and 209 for revision arthroplasty. The cohort had 316 women and the mean age at surgery was 72.9years (30.2–89.9). The mean follow-up was 10.2±5 years (0.1–19.3). A statistical analysis was done based on the Kaplan–Meier survival curves in two subsets of patients: primary and revision surgery.

At the final review, 264 patients had died because of reasons unrelated to the procedures (mean 7.8±4.7years after the procedure), 48 were lost to follow-up (mean 3.0±3.3years after the procedure), and 39 patients (8%) had undergone acetabular revision of which 12 were for infection (2.5%), 25 were for loosening (5.4%) (5 femoral loosening only) and 2 were for dislocation (0.4%). In all, there were 10/466 dislocations (2.1%) of which 5/257 (1.9%) were in the primary group and 5/209 (2.4%) were in the revision group: 2 had a cup exchange and 8 were reduced by closed procedures. The probability of survival free of mechanical complications at 10years was estimated at 94.8%±1.6% (95% CI: 91.6%–98.0%) for the primary group and 87.8%±2.7% (95% CI: 82.4%–93.2%) for the revision groups (p=0.0017). There were 39 re-operations in the overall cohort: 1/257 (0.4%) for dislocation, 7/257 (2.7%) for aseptic loosening and 3/257 (1.2%) for infection in the primary group, while in the revision group, 1/209 (0.5%) was for dislocation, 18/209 (8.6%) for aseptic loosening and 9/209 (4.3%) for infection.

The Lefèvre retentive cup has good long-term survival with a low mechanical complication rate, both in primary and revision surgery. To us, this implant appears to be a reliable salvage procedure for total hip replacement in patients at high risk for dislocation.

IV; retrospective study without control group.