Thank you for your note.

Firstly, I think you should be a little more relaxed about this – it is a very routine operation these days and providing you have a good surgeon who is doing lots of these operations then you should have nothing to fear.

There is an inherent failure rate in all medical interventions – artificial hips eventually wear out as do natural hips.

The DePuy ASR and Pinnacle hips have been highlighted and no good surgeon is going to be recommending a poor option these days.

The anterior hip replacement seems to be very good in theory and in practice, I have heard nothing to change my impression of this. Because the muscles are spread apart and not cut, the recovery is much faster initially but over the course of a year there is no real difference in outcomes.

I have had a hip replacement 3 years ago and a revision 3 weeks ago – both the more traditional posterior approach. This latest operation was a huge one but I am recovering really quickly and the main limitation is the fact that I have had two bone grafts and so can only put 60% of my weight on my hip for the first 4 – 6 weeks!

I have selected ceramic on ceramic because my metal on metal hip failed and poisoned me – destroying bone and tissue and making my life miserable. The old system was Smith and Nephew, the revision system is Zimmer and when I have my left hip replaced late this year it will be a Zimmer ceramic on ceramic too.

I think the ceramic on ceramic is the best bet.

In my view – you have little to fear provided you have got a top surgeon – the best predictor is that of this is that they have done hundreds of these operations a year and have a low failure rate. The less operations they do or have done, the less skilled they are likely to be.

While there are lots of horror stories on my Blog – remember that apart from the DePuy and other Metal on Metal Systems, the usual expectation is 95% last 10 – 15 years or more.

All the best.