Epidemiology: hip and knee.

This article reviews the epidemiologic features of periprosthetic fractures around total hip arthroplasty and total knee arthroplasty according to the site of fracture occurrence. The frequency and cause of intraoperative and postoperative periprosthetic fractures vary by anatomic site. For each anatomic site, unique risk factors, some demographic and some technical, appear to be related to risk of fracture. For several anatomic sites, excellent articles that collate large numbers of series are available to the reader to provide aggregate information concerning the epidemiology of these fractures.