Patients who have new types of hip and knee replacement are more likely to need revision

People who have hip replacement surgery are nearly three times more likely to need a revision operation within three years if their joint is resurfaced rather than fully replaced and cemented, shows a review of procedures carried out by the NHS in England.

Patients whose knee replacement operation involves a unicondylar prosthesis also fare worse than patients given a traditional knee prosthesis, concluded the study, which linked records from the National Joint Registry and the Department of Health’s hospital episode statistics (PLoS Medicine doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050179).

The study tracked more than 150 000 people who underwent a hip or knee replacement between April 2003 and September 2006 in the NHS in …