Follow-up Protocol
updated 10/8/2023
I want to make sure that all of my patients are functioning well. No joint replacement operation is perfect. Complications and failures do occur. I want to know about all major complications and failures, so that I can help you and so that I can continue to learn and improve my methods for future patients. If you have a complication or failure treated elsewhere, I want to know all the details about this occurrence.
On several occasions, patients have had incorrect treatment recommended by other surgeons who are misinformed about resurfacing, therefore, please consult with me before you have another surgeon treat your resurfaced hip. My published success rate with revision of hip resurfacing is 96% at 6 years. This is almost as good as for primary surgery. In contrast, many major centers report high failure rates for these revisions (Oxford has published a 50% failure rate for adverse wear related revisions).
The best medical standard is to perform routine follow-up on all joint replacement patients. Many failure modes cause significant symptoms. But some problems are relatively silent. Due to our extensive experience we have developed surveillance protocols to discover problems early, as well as knowledge to properly diagnose the causes for problems.