Pat’s Corner – Hip Resurfacing is still an excellent option 2012 despite negative media
I would like to comment, mostly for the people new to hip resurfacing, about the negative NY Times articles and other media against hip resurfacing. All of this information is one sided. The authors and some surgeons have an agenda against hip resurfacing. The retention rate of the BHR and other devices has been recorded and the records are available to the public. The first place to look are the national registries since they are actual statistics, not opinions:
Also watch the video interviews with the top hip resurfacing surgeons. They address all of this negative press and give a complete story to the success of hip resurfacing. Here are my interviews:
All of my recent interviews include the doctors’ responses to the negative press about hip resurfacing and the negativity of MOM metal on metal THRs and Hip Resurfacing.
Mr. McMinn addresses the negative press here:
The information in the National Registries and the video interviews are not opinions, the information is based on facts. Many of the top resurfacing surgeons have done thousands of resurfacings and they post their retention rates. The overall retention rate was 99.9% worldwide before 2006 when the US surgeons jumped in and started doing hip resurfacing. Now the overall retention rate is 96%. If you look at the retention rates for THRs for overall, males and females, it is really not any better. The retention rates for individual experienced hip resurfacing surgeons is usually about 99%.
We all have to realize there is no perfect hip device or solution. There will always be some problems with both THRs and hip resurfacing. The way we can best assure a good outcome is to choose the top surgeons that do thousands of these surgeries and have good records.
It is easy to write articles and say something isn’t good based on opinion and half facts. The only way you know that you can’t believe the information is to read other statistic based information. That will be from the national registries and from the hip resurfacing doctors own series of hip resurfacings.
People that have had a hip resurfacing or know a person that has had one understand the above information, but new people can be easily frightened by this type of negative press and media. Unfortunately, the ASR did not have a good record. Also many less experienced surgeons did not place acetabular cups properly causing a lot of revisions. The really experienced surgeons realized early on, often by instinct and knowing a person’s physical build, that the cups needed to be placed properly to make the bearing work well and result in a long term life of a hip resurfacing. Also, there seem to be a lot of Metal on Metal THRs that have had problems. Even with THRs the components must be placed properly for the two pieces of the bearing to work properly. If the acetabular cup was misplaced, there could be edge loading in a THR, too. So many things have happened to make metal on metal hip resurfacing look bad. We need to look at actual statistics to see how well metal on metal hip resurfacing works. There are thousands of us on the Surface Hippy Hip Talk Discussion Group that have well working hip resurfacings.
There is a great deal of information about positive outcomes of hip resurfacing patients. Please take time to read all the information available before allowing the negative, misleading articles in the media frighten you away from hip resurfacing.
Read the responses from top experienced hip resurfacing surgeons about how great hip resurfacing is compared to total hip replacement. Learn their high retention rates and statistics from actual national registries and medical studies.