The Exeter Hip in Chester

Mr Janardhan Rao on Wed, 12 Feb 2014

"Slowly, steadily, I move at my own pace. They call me Flash though I won't dash. Who wants to run a race?" This was the song which Flash the slow moving tortoise used to sing. Some of you will remember him as a character in the children's TV program, from the early 1970‘s, called Fingerbobs. Flash would carry heavy loads and would progress slowly but eventually he would win out in the end.

The Exeter Hip replacement has been going for longer than the children’s television show and is still going strong This device was originally developed in 1969 and in 2010 it celebrated the millionth implantation world wide. There has been over 40 years of excellent clinical data on this implant.

So what is a Hip replacement and how do you choose? A total hip replacement where both the socket and the ball of the hip joint are replaced. This is a very common orthopaedic operation. This allows people with severe hip pain to walk around with relatively little discomfort, which is why this procedure is so popular. There have been many newer implants which have come and gone in field of hip replacement.

One of the most noticeable one is the removal of the 3M capital hip replacement. This was a copy of the Charnley hip replacement, but was made from titanium. It was shown to have a higher than normal failure rate and for that reason has been withdrawn from the market. More recently, in August 2010, there has been recall of the ASR De Puy hip resurfacing for generating metal on metal failure. These prostheses were made from cobalt chrome.

One of the reasons why these implants failed was because of the geometry. The cups were not fully hemispherical. For this reason they were more likely to edge load. and micro filings of metal was being pealed of the head of the hip replacement. These metal on metal particles generated

The Exeter Hip replacement does not have any of these adverse features and is one of the most successful Hip replacements in the country. It is the market leader with over half of the market share of implants registered on the national hip register.

So just like the slow and steady tortoise in the children's television program, some hip replacements, like the Exeter stem, win out in the long term. The may not be the most fashionable or the newest thing but manage to get past the winning line in the long term. This is one of the reasons that Mr Rao performs cemented hip replacements such as the Exeter Hip. He has never used the ASR and the 3M Capital Hip.

Mr Janardhan Rao is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon who is a specialist in hip and knee surgery. He has over twenty years of experience in orthopaedic surgery and has always aimed to be the best orthopaedic surgeon, that he possibly can be. He has vast experience in performing modern hip replacement surgery.

Mr Rao was delighted to return to Cheshire, where he originally went to primary school. He has practice privileges at the Countess of Chester Hospital, as well as the Nuffield Hospital Grosvenor Chester.