Hip Resurfacing Still an Excellent Option by Dr. Raimund Voelker

[Pat Walter]

Thank You to Dr. Voelker for taking time to write his experience with hip resurfacing. He has done 900 Hip Resurfacings to date and 450 BMHRs to date.

Hip Resurfacing Still an Excellent Option by Dr. Raimund Voelker

There has been a big hype about and towards hip resurfacing and now there is a big hype against metal-on-metal. As a specialized hip surgeon it is quite easy to see the differences in all conclusions and recommendations.

The problems with stemmed metal-on-metal implants with big heads should clearly be separated from discussions around resurfacing. That means those findings of the National Joint Registry for England and Wales are not aiming into the direction of all metal-on-metal bearings in general.

Next problem is to find the right conclusions out of revision rates in comparison. Hip resurfacing has a demanding operative technique and pre-selection of the patients is necessary. The learn curve is long, some implants like the ASR and the DUROM failed in one way or the other, many surgeons tried a couple of hip resurfacings per year and quit later. They are all in our statistics. It is surprising that we have almost excellent data under those circumstances, isn't it?

Out of my experience I have 3 simple recommendations to be successful with hip resurfacing. They count for patients and surgeons as well:

The right patient
the right surgeon
the right implant

If you follow this track you are safe and most of the time better in your overall outcomes than suggesting or performing THR. Many fear the outcomes of ceramic-on-ceramic in the future. Maybe we face similar misleading information about this issue soon.

Dr. Raimund Voelker
Head of hipsurgery

ATOS Clinic Muenchen
Effnerstraße 38
Germany-81925 Muenchen
Tel: +49 89-204000100
Fax: +49 89-204000199
voelker@atos-muenchen.de
www.atos-muenchen.de

[evant]

Thanks Pat, and to Dr Raimund Voelker too.

It's good to hear from very experienced hip resurfacing surgeons in the non-english speaking (first language) part of europe / the world, otherwise we may become too isolated in our thinking towards hip resurfacing.