Dr. Pritchett and large boned woman

[kleinink]

Hello Hippies,
I am scheduled for a metal on poly with Dr. Pritchett next month after reading success stories and having friends in other states (all males between 49-55) having great success with resurfacing.

I'm very nervous as the other surgeons I met with (Teeny in Tacoma and Manner UW) said I should do the Skryker total rather than resurfacing because I am a woman.   Are there women out there who had good, 5-10 year results from a resurfaced hip with Dr. Pritchett?   I am 49, someone fit, tho limping, 5'11" 200lbs with big, dense bones but am afraid of the metal on metal option.

Thank you for any replies,
kleinink

[hernanu]

Hi and welcome to the site.

Women do have a higher overall rate of revision than men. That seem to be tied more to the size of the device than the gender.

The longest studies available about survival are probably the Australian registries, where they have kept track of the statistics over about ten years. There is a wealth of information there, accessible through Pat's efforts on this site.

Applicable to your question, though is the result of incidence of revision by gender and by head size. Generally, for either gender, the larger the head, the better results come.

In the attached table, taken from the Australian registry, you can see that women with the larger head devices have results equal to men with large devices. The results show a cumulative 3.5% for larger women by the end of seven years. That is total failures over the span of 7 years, not the failure rate per year. Those are excellent results.

As you can see, the rate of failure for smaller devices is higher over the length of the study. Keep in mind that these are also the results for all patients, good candidates or not, all surgeons, experienced and skilled and less so, also including some devices that were recalled.

In the case of the more experienced surgeons, those failure rates drop quite a bit. You have a highly experienced surgeon, who is going to give you a much better opportunity at a good result - better than the average in the table.

Nothing is guaranteed, as we all know. You have to look at it as an opportunity to be healed. The chances, though - even for the lower sized devices over the span of 7-10 years is about or over 90% for all patients and all surgeons and all devices.

I also had two highly regarded surgeons in teaching hospitals in Boston tell me that I should not have an HR. They wanted me to do a THR bilateral with all of the restrictions. I did not heed their advice and am very happy not to have.

Given your description and bone density, it sounds like you would be fit for a larger device. Just to make sure, though - ask Dr. Pritchett what size device is most likely to be used.