The “glove” technique: a modified method for femoral fixation of antibiotic-loaded hip spacers

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the source is credited. DOI 10.3109/17453670903039551 In the past few years hip spacers have become popular in the treatment of infected total hip arthroplasties (THAs), with reported infection eradication rates of > 90% (Anagnostakos et al. 2006). Two methods have been described for femoral fixation of a hip spacer. The spacer stem can be inserted into the femur either by a “press-fit” method, or by cementing onto the proximal femur (Anagnostakos et al. 2006). It is unclear which of these two methods provides superior fixation and thus acts better in the prevention of a spacer dislocation. In this report, we introduce a new technique for femoral fixation of an antibiotic-impregnated hip spacer.