Hip arthroplasty/ replacement

Okay, so we're coming to do your hip replacement today. As you know it's, your hip is a ball and socket joint and I'm afraid I knew the ball and socket disease, they've worn out, that's what's causing all this pain. So the idea is we cut away the bone, get rid of the ball and socket and give you a brand new one so that you can hopefully start walking and get rid of the pain. You're, you know, you're a grown person, I can't make you do any of these procedures but the benefits of it would be what we plan to do will be reducing the pain and improving your mobility and most people do have a good outcome with this. Things you need to know before you agree to the procedure, the risks of the procedure that I'm going to tell you about now. As with any operation anywhere in the body the generic risks will be bleeding, infection and damage to the surrounding structures by which I would mean nerves or blood vessels. Specifically for hip replacement, things that you need to know about, is that when we do the operation there's quite a lot of banging and drilling and chiseling so occasionally we can create a break in the bone. If that happens, and I haven't seen it happen more than a handful of times, if something needs to do about it and we will just go and do it for you straight away and we'll tell you about it once you've woken up. That's the safest and quickest thing to do rather than not do anything, wake you up and do it at a later stage. Is that okay with you? Great. Other things that you need to know is once we've replaced your ball and socket joint with the artificial one, from now until the rest of your life you need to be careful not to dislocate that hip joint. So that means not sitting in chairs that are too low or sitting with your legs crossed, because then that's putting the hip at risk of coming out and we don't want that. If that does happen, then that may require a manipulation or even another operation to put it back. We hope this procedure is the only one you need, but some people, well these days hip replacements usually last about 15 years. Very occasionally, they last less than that and we don't really know why. And that's why we would be seeing you in the clinic for one to two, sometimes even more years, regular x-rays to make sure everything's going well for you. If it's turning out that there's something wrong, then we can talk about any need for future operations to a later date. Other slightly more minor things to note is that you will have a scar, I'm afraid, on the side of the leg. Quite near the top, so it's easily hidden by clothes. And occasionally, people notice that their two legs are not exactly the same length. Most people don't find it's a problem, and we're talking only one to two centimetres, not inches. So if you're happy to go ahead and proceed yourself, it will take about an hour to an hour and a half to do. It can be done either under a general anaesthetic where you're completely asleep or it can be done under a spinal anaesthetic where you have an injection in your back and your legs become numb but you're not completely knocked out. Either way from our perspective it doesn't matter but the anaesthetic doctor will speak to you about which is safest for you. from the operation we'd expect you to be able to get out of bed from the next day, so tomorrow, and most people stay in hospital about four to five days. It's not the operation that keeps people in hospital, it's the fact that you need to learn to walk again and rebuild your strength and as soon as physiotherapy team are happy with you that's usually when you're okay to go home. And we will then see you in clinic usually in about six weeks time just to check that everything is going well. In terms of going home, again as I said you're not allowed to sit in low chairs, not allowed to cross your legs and we generally advise no driving for the first six weeks and for the first two weeks when the wound is still quite raw not to soak in a bathtub or go swimming.