The Hip Operation - Resurfacing

The surgeon will start by making an incision through the skin and then through the muscle layers. There are many different types of approach to this and is down to surgeon preference. The surgeon will prepare the soft tissues before operating on the bony areas. Your hip will then be dislocated in order to gain access to the bony parts that need to be replaced. Then, either the femoral head or the acetabulum will be prepared, again this is down to surgeon preference as to which is treated first.

Your surgeon will measure the size of your femoral head/ neck junction in order to establish the correct size for you. The bone of the femoral head is chamfered so that the metal cap can fit. It is secured in place by using either bone cement or some implants have a cementless option whereby the part of the implant that touches the bone is roughened so that bone grows in and around it.

The acetabulum is reamed by using a sharp hemispherical cheese grater like instrument, here all of the hard bone is removed until there is a good bed of spongy bone (cancellous bone) for the cup to be placed. The cup is always uncemented and is stabilized in the acetabulum by a scratch fit from the roughened metal on the outside of the acetabular cup. Your hip is then reduced (put back together) and your surgeon will check your leg length to ensure that both sides are similar, they may not always be exactly the same length as naturally we can have around 1cm leg length discrepancy.