Minimally invasive surgery of the hip: a review of the literature

Summary: For several years, special attention has been paid to minimally invasive prosthetic surgery by surgeons, prosthetic implant manufacturers, the media and patients, especially in English-speaking countries. On Google, the literature regarding this subject is abundant but few articles (barely twenty) are referenced in medical literature. Attempts to reduce surgical access by reducing the size of the incision exist with all types of access. Publications on the subject mix retrospective and prospective studies and personal experiments. They remain insufficient and the results are too variable to allow a clear and objective point of view. Minimally invasive surgery of the hip is optimized bysome authors and still criticized by others. Nevertheless, it raises a positive debate on the differences between surgical accesses and the improvement of postoperative surgical, medical or functional outcomes of hip arthroplasty. Also it clearly appears that it must be performed with adequate control of the position of implants, which is necessary in terms of longlasting and normal functioning of the prosthesis.