Not enough experience . . .

[2muchpain]

Help please .... I live in Louisville, Ky.  The pain is getting worse.  The 2 surgeons here have done too few (hip resurfacings) for my comfort.  I'm looking to find surgeons in the US with at least 100 - 150 of these completed.  I saw the list on the web site.

My questions is ..... can anyone direct me to the site where all the US doctors record the number of these procedures they have completed?  Does the federal government not collect this?  Does the manufacture collect this?  Am I stuck calling these doctors on the phone?

[Pat Walter]

Hello 2 Much Pain

I am sorry to hear about your hip problems. 

The real problem with the US doctors is - there is no official way of knowing anything about them.  Overseas the UK and Australia have national surveys which list all doctors and their records.  In the US, it is secret private information that doctors are not very willing to share with patients.

There is no such Federal Government record and no manufactures records that I know of.  The only way of finding out about the doctors is calling them or meeting with them.  I have most of the very experienced doctors on my list.  The newer trained BHR doctors only started the surgeries after May of 2006.  It takes time to accumlate many surgeries when you only do one or two a week.  They often do all types of surgeries and mix a few hip resurfacings in now and then.  Even some of the more dedicated US doctors have not been able to do hundreds yet. 

Our medical system keeps the patients in the dark.  It is difficult finding out anything about them.  That is one advantage to the very large Yahoo Surface Hippy Discussion Group http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/surfacehippy/- there are over 6000+ members and they often talk about their doctors experieince.  That is where I get a lot of input for my list.  But most of the newer doctors still don't have a hundred or more surgeries yet. 

I have started this Hip Talk Discussion Group so there is a smaller, more personal group. Sometimes there are over 100 emails a day on the large group and newbies sometimes get lost.  But it is an invaluable group to learn about what is happening to many surface hippies or wanna bee hippies. 

I personally would not want to use a doctor with only 30 or 100 hip resurfacings.  I have done a lot of study on the subject in the last couple years and hip resurfacing is as much an art as a skill.  Your recovery and long term outlook normally seems better with the very experienced doctors.  There are quite a few people that will disagree with me - but from the medical studies posted on my website and on the internet, they show there is a steep learning curve.  My personal hip resurfacing doctor, Dr. De Smet has done over 2400 hip resurfacings and suggest a person consider a doctor with over 100 hip resurfacing surgeries.  You can go to school to learn the technique - but only experience makes an expert. You can't buy experieince, you earn it.

You have some great surgeons with a few states of you - Dr. Gross, Dr. Mont and others on my list.  Consider checking them out.  They don't use the BHR, they use the Wright C+ which is very similar.  The Wright C+ comes in more sizes than the BHR.  When a doctor can't find the right BHR size, they usually use a Wright C+ anyways.  Dr. De Smet uses them when he needs to make sure a leg won't be too short or long.

Again, I am sorry that there is no easy way to find out about these surgeons.  When they write to me and ask to be posted on my list - I always ask for their statistics. Some don't like the quesitons, but I don't post them if they will not share their information with me.

Pat