| About Total Hip Replacement |

Now there are a host of other possible complications if you review series of several thousand you will see literally dozens of possible complications that could take place but take place with exceeding rarity. Things such as muscle ruptures, pulling off of the tendon, injuries to nerves and blood vessels, superficial infection and opening of the wound, and other things of this nature may occur. They don't occur very often, but they can occur.

One of the things that could occur is the loosening of the prosthesis. This loosening would not happen suddenly, but it would be a gradual process and it would be characterized by discomfort. In most instances, if a prosthesis becomes loose, it can be corrected but that usually means further surgery. Now what is the nature of this risk? That depends on several circumstances. We think in general, it's probably a cumulative risk of about 1% per year, so that if you have your prosthesis for 20 years, the possibility of loosening over that 20 years could be as high as 1 in 5. If you have your prosthesis for 10 years, it could be 10%.

Activity. To a certain extent, what the patient needs to realize is that an artificial hip can never be as good as a normal hip. There is always the potential that it may get infected at some date in the future. It will not tolerate the same kinds of physical stresses that the normal hip will tolerate. We strongly recommend against physical activity such as tennis, running, contact sports, things that can contribute to loosening of the hip through a physical process and the physical force applied to the hip that results in motion between the prosthesis and the bone and loosening and pain. But this is the reason that one has to be cautious about actually performing a total hip replacement and why it should only be applied to those patients who have severe symptoms.