title: Acute destruction of the hip joints and rapid resorption of femoral head in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
abstract: We report three rheumatoid arthritis (RA) cases with acute destruction of hip joint and rapid resorption of femoral head. The condition occurred in less than 6 months and closely resembled rapid destructive coxarthrosis. All three patients were postmenopausal women with active RA who had been taking steroids. Two of the patients were taking prednisolone (PSL) of over 20 mg as maximum dose per day, and all patients were resistant to disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Other than the problems of their hip joints, one had a giant bursitis around the pathological side of the hip joint, another had multiple rheumatoid nodules and skin infarction, and the other suffered from insufficiency fracture of the contralateral femoral subcapital lesion. As a result, all of them had total hip arthroplasty. We recommend taking repetitive radiographs for RA patients with continuing severe hip pain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Institute of Rheumatology, Tokyo Women's Medical University, 10-22 Kawada, Shinjuku, Tokyo 162-0054, Japan.
authors.forename: Koichiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yoshino
authors.forename: Shigeki
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Momohara
authors.forename: Katsunori
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ikari
authors.forename: Koichiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kawamura
authors.forename: Takeshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mochizuki
authors.forename: Takuji
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Iwamoto
authors.forename: Yasuo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Niki
authors.forename: Seiji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Saitou
authors.forename: Taisuke
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tomatsu
mesh_terms: D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D019644:Arthroplasty, Replacement, Hip; D001862:Bone Resorption / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D005270:Femur Head / Q000473:pathology*; D006621:Hip Joint / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008875:Middle Aged; D017698:Postmenopause