A pictorial questionnaire distributed to 56 hip surgeons who use an anterolateral approach to the hip revealed that only 46% use an approach which conforms closely to the original eponymous description. This is important because problems associated with anterolateral approaches such as the bare trochanter, bursitis, gluteal detachment, persistent limp and superior gluteal nerve palsy may be associated with particular variants. We suggest a classification to append to eponymous descriptions which may assist in proper evaluation of these approaches in future, as well as being helpful to any surgeon required to carry out revisions on such cases.
