AUSTRALIA IDENTIFIES BEST AND WORST PERFORMING JOINT REPLACEMENTS (Orthopedics This Week)
Every year 8,000 Australians have to get back on the operating table because of faulty joint replacements, according to national health reporter Sue Dunlevy, writing for the Melbourne Herald Sun. A study by the National Joint Replacement Registry has identified the four devices with the lower record of problems. Even when these four devices are implanted by novice surgeons, the report claims, they have the same risk of requiring revision as when an experienced surgeon implanted them.
This is the first time the registry, which has been tracking the performance of hip and knee replacements since 1999, has reported on the question of how surgeon experience affects the outcome of joint replacement surgery. While it found that surgeons with more than eight years of experience had a lower rate of revision operations, it also found that when surgeons used certain devices their years of experience did not matter.
Dunlevy reported that the two most commonly used hip replacements in Australia—Exeter V40/Trident and Corail/Pinnacle combinations—show no difference in rates of revision regardless of the ex...
