What sort of things can go wrong with a hip replacement? I used to be acquainted with John Parillo who had a hip replacement surgery and he ended up having to go back in sometime later and have his redone. I guess he got some kind of infection in there. Is that common?
A lot can go wrong...... but if you have a good surgeon everything should be fine. Your leg is in a tourniquet for the procedure to help minimize blood loss. You obviously don't want to be in the tourniquet for any longer than you have to - if the surgeon sucks - your hip replacement can take longer which increases tourniquet time.
The doc can fracture the femur while broaching or implanting..... this would require a circlage wiring to be done. Basically they wrap a wire around the fractured part of the femur. They can't use a plate because they can't screw into a metal implant.
Infections are ALWAYS a risk becaus soooo many things come into play. The doc and the scrub techs/nurses have to practice proper sterile technique. The sterilization department of the hospital needs to properly sterilize the instruments needed to do the procedue. Companies like mine use gamma irradiation to sterilize their implants. If this is don properly they should reach a SAL-10 (Sterilization assurance level) - this pretty much means that there is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance that something lived through the process.
There's risks of your body not accepting the metal..... and further down the line your body not accepting other implants because of the hip/knee implant.
These things are done all the time today..... there's not much to worry about. Just make sure you find a competant surgeon and you shouldn't have a problem.
~Haz~
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