[Source: Daily Mail UK]
A hip replacement procedure that sees patients walk out of hospital just 24 hours after surgery could halve waiting lists in the UK.
The technique, which involves doctors reaching the joint through an incision of just 5cm, has a remarkably low infection rate.
It also spares the muscle surrounding the joint, allowing 90 per cent of patients to be up and walking on the same day as surgery – without crutches.
And while it's currently primarily available privately in the UK, a number of expert surgeons have told The Mail on Sunday that they expect the operation to become the gold standard procedure for the National Health Service within the next ten years.
'Hip replacements are the most common operation in orthopaedics,' says Professor Adrian Wilson, consultant orthopaedic surgeon at private clinic Oveli Healthcare.
'And what this very clever technique has done is taken a procedure that already works well and transformed it in terms of safety and speed.
'The average time for a double hip replacement through the standard operation is 90 minutes – we can now do them in a third of that time. By cutting waiting list times and saving the NHS millions, this will help thousands.'
Just under 100,000 people in the UK received hip replacement surgery last year. The operation usually takes a few months to recover from, and the average wait time is 128 days – up from 87 days before Covid.
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