Introduction: Surgical treatment of femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) is becoming a worldwide current practice. We analyse if clinical and functional results are influenced by preoperative degenerative hip changes.

Materials and Methods: 107 FAI operated hips in 105 patients with a mean follow up of 3,1 years (range: 31 to 53 months) were evaluated and divided into 3 groups according to Tönnis Scala for preoperative radiological degenerative hip stages: group A 32 patients Tönnis 0, group B 61 Tönnis 1 and group C 24 Tönnis 2. Impingement test, Merle D’aubigné and WOMAC scores were assessed 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months and every year after operation. SPSS 10.0 software used (SPSS INC, Chicago, Ill) was used for statistical analysis and comparisons were performed by means of chi-squared test; p< 0,05 was considered to be significant.

Results: After 3 months impingement test improved significantly in 30 cases Tönnis 0 (93,75%; p=0,012) and 58 cases Tönnis 1 (95,08%; p=0,008), whereas in Tönnis 2 it was observed only in 14 cases (58,3%; p=0,354). At this point no statistical difference was observed at the subsequent three years (p=0,273, p=0,377, p=0,334). Merle D’Aubigné and WOMAC scores improved significantly at the latest follow-up in groups A (91,3%, p=0,010) and B (93,4,%, p=0,024). However in group C only 45,8% of the cases improved significantly (p=0,383).

Conclusions: Surgical results of FAI differ in patients with Tönnis stage 0 and 1 when compared with Tönnis 2. Thus it seems to be reasonable to recommend symptomatic patients surgical treatment of FAI as early as it appears.