Charnley Hip Replacement

Hip replacement is a medical procedure in which the hip is replaced by an implant. It is the most successful, the safest and cheapest form of joint replacement surgery. The first recorded attempts at hip replacement, which were made in Germany, used ivory to replace the femoral head.
The use of hip prostheses has become more widespread in the 1930s, the artificial joints made of steel or chrome. They were considered better than the arthritis, but had a number of drawbacks. The main problem is that the articular surfaces could not be lubricated by the body, leading to wear and loosening, and hence the need to replace the seal again (known as revision operations).

Attempts to use Teflon product attached to the origin of osteolysis and covered a period of two years. Another major problem is infection. Before the advent of antibiotics, surgery on joints made at high risk of infection. Even with antibiotic treatment, infection is always a cause for some revision operations. These infections are not necessarily due to surgery, they can also be the result of bacteria in the bloodstream during dental treatment.

The modern artificial joint owes much to the work of John Charnley at Manchester Royal Infirmary and his work in the field of tribology resulted in a design that completely replaced the other designs in the 1970s. Charnley design consisted of three parts - (a) a metal (originally stainless steel) femoral component, (2) forming an ultra high molecular weight polyethylene acetabular, both of which were set at bone using (3) special bone cement. The joint replacement, which was known as the low friction arthroplasty was lubricated with synovial fluid.

The small femoral head (22.25mm) produces wear issues is only appropriate for sedentary patients, but - on the positive side - a huge reduction of friction resulting leads to excellent clinical results. For over two decades, the Charnley low friction arthroplasty design has been the system most used around the world, far exceeding other available options (like McKee and Ring).

In 1960, an orthopedic surgeon in Burma, Dr. San Baw (June 29, 1922 to December 7, 1984), pioneered the use of ivory hip prostheses to replace non-consolidated fractures of the femoral neck (hip bone) at first use of ivory prosthesis to replace the fractured hip bone of a 83 year old Burmese Buddhist nun, Daw Punya. This was done while Dr. San Baw was the chief of orthopedic surgery at the Mandalay General Hospital Manadalay, Burma. Dr. San Baw used more than 300 hip d'Ivoire since the 1960s to the 1980s.

He presented a paper entitled "hip replacements for fractures unconsolidated Ivory femoral neck at the conference of the British Orthopaedic Association held in London in September 1969. A success rate of 88% was discerned in that Dr. San Baw's patients ranging in age from 24 to 87 were able to walk, crouch, cycling and playing football, just weeks after their bone fracture hips were replaced with ivory prostheses. Dr. San Baw use of ivory has been, at least in Burma in 1960, 1970 and 1980 (before the illicit ivory trade became rampant starting in the early 1990s) cheaper than metal. In addition, because of the physical, mechanical, chemical, and biological qualities of ivory, it was found that there was a biological bond better "in ivory with human tissues near the prosthesis ivory. An abstract of the paper Dr San Baw, which he presented to the Conference of the British Orthopaedic Association in 1969, is published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (British edition), February 1970.

In the last decade, several improvements were made developments in the process of replacement and total hip prostheses. Many hip implants are made of a ceramic material rather than polyethylene, which some research I.