Surgeon questions benefits of new technique

The apparent benefits of the revolutionary technique for hip replacement surgery were questioned yesterday.

Angus Wallace, professor of orthopaedic surgery at Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, said there were doubts over how long the replacement hips would last. "There is some serious concern by orthopaedic surgeons that minimally invasive hip replacements might in the medium term give poorer results for patients," he said. Evidence showed that cemented hips lasted better than uncemented ones. The new technique did not use cement.

In addition, the prosthesis had to be fitted in the correct position and that was more difficult when using the keyhole technique. "Until a large series of cases has been reported, many of us are concerned that this is currently an untried procedure. It takes five years to tell whether it is effective and even in the US they have not yet got that length of experience.

"It may be a step forward but the way it has been done has not been thought through. The surgeons should have waited until they had done 100 cases and then reported the results. Instead they are creating in the minds of the general public the idea that this is a super- duper new treatment."

Last month one of the world's leading experts on hip replacement surgery, Cecil Rorabeck, of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, told the annual conference of the British Orthopaedic Association in Birmingham that the new technique was less likely to give a good result than the standard hip replacement, which involves a much longer stay in hospital.

"There was a fair degree of agreement from the floor that he was speaking common sense," Professor Wallace said.