Reassurance for Birmingham Metal on Metal

[kas1989]

Hello everyone,

I'm finally scheduled for surgery in September for metal on metal Birmingham hip resurfacing. I'm coping fine but I've had to really easy off on sports and social life at the tender age of 36, so I do need this.

However, with the Recerf ceramic on ceramic implant being approved I feel like I'm signed up for obsolete technology, and it's causing me genuine panic. I had resigned to the fact it wouldn't be approved any time soon and now it's here on time but I'm out of luck as it's not been given the green light by the NHS.

My surgeon literally had the CoC implant on his desk and can give it to me if I pay out of pocket for the entire surgery (god knows how much, it's £14000 to go private just with the old implant I think), but if I go MoM it's free.

My surgeon said he wouldn't recommend it anyway as it's not got the years of proven efficacy the Birmingham hip has for active large young men like me... he'd only push for it if I was a woman facing regular full hip replacement, but I can't help but feel he's just being nice, not fully honest.

Honestly, am I fine to proceed? or am I better really pushing for CoC, even if that means delaying or paying... Any help or reassurance would be greatly appreciated.

[MattFL]

There are some successful long term BHR patients here, hopefully they will chime in.  I'm only 10 months into my own BHR (metal on metal) and so far so good, it has been a real life changer.  To oversimplify what my doctor said, they've figured out the bugs and modern BHR implants are good.  The parts float on a layer of fluid from your body, similar to how oil in an engine works, so the metal should not be rubbing while you're moving unless something was done wrong.  My personal fear about ceramic would be cracking or chipping.  One thing I would look into, that I did not see until after my own surgery, is robotic assisted surgery.  The blurb I saw made it sound like a CNC type of thing that would be much more precise than a human could be, which in theory would improve odds of an ideal outcome.  My surgery was already done so I didn't look that much into it, but to me personally this would be worth looking more into.