Patients undergoing certain types of new joint operations may be more likely to need repeat surgery, research has suggested.
A study into revision rates in England found that people having newer types of hip resurfacing and knee replacement were more likely to need further corrective surgery in the future.
Researchers from the Royal College of Surgeons of England looked at data for 327,557 hip or knee replacement procedures carried out between April 2003 and September 2006.
Overall, they found about one in 75 patients (1.4%) needed their joint replacement revising within three years of the initial operation – comparable with other developed countries.
But researchers found differences when it came to the types of replacements given to patients.
Using the comprehensive National Joint Registry (NJR), they looked at rates for “resurfacing”, where the femur thigh bone is “resurfaced” with a metal component – as opposed to cemented or cementless prosthesis.
Researchers also looked at the newer type of knee replacement – unicondylar – which involves only replacing the damaged knee compartment rather than the whole knee.
The study looked at operations involving cemented prosthesis, cementless prosthesis, hybrid prosthesis and resurfacing.
The results showed a revision rate at three years of 0.9% for cemented, 2% for cementless, 1.5% for hybrid and 2.6% for hip resurfacing.
It also looked patients undergoing knee replacements using cemented prosthesis, cementless prosthesis, hybrids and unicondylar prosthesis.
The revision rate at three years was 1.4% for cemented, 1.5% for cementless but 2.8% for unicondylar prosthesis.
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