Evaluation of the thickness of the proximal femoral canal in patients living at altitude

Wiliam Soltau Dani, Marcos Emilio Kuschnaroff Contreras, Eleazar Lara Padilha, Francisco José Berral

Our goal is to confirm the hypothesis that people who were born and raised on cities at altitude have a smaller proximal femoral canal. Prospective study with 169 participants, divided into two groups. Group A: 99 patients who were born and raised at altitude and group B: 70 patients who were born and raised at low altitude. All patients underwent panoramic radiographs of the pelvis, where we marked three measure and checked the thickness of the cortical and the lateral and medial cortical, as well as the thickness of the femoral canal. We noticed that the first measure showed no significant difference in both groups, but the second measure, the lateral cortex, is thicker in group A, and the femoral canal is smaller in comparison to group B. We concluded that patients who were born and raised at altitude have a smaller femoral canal. This may help in proper planning of future surgical procedures, especially in total hip arthroplasty cases.