Medications, physical therapy, and walking aids are used to take pressure off the joint, reduce pain, and improve mobility. If pain persists or the therapies don't help, surgery may be considered. The average hip replacement lasts 15 to 20 years. But as younger and more active patients get artificial hips, revision surgery becomes more common. In 1995, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons says 29,000 hip revisions were performed in the U.S. Revision is needed when hip joints wear out, are damaged, or loosen.
Patients needing hip revision often have bone loss around the artificial joint.
Without enough healthy bone, doctors have nothing to which they can anchor or support the new joint. Using extra cement to fill in the empty areas or a larger prosthesis may be an alternative. But sometimes these procedures don't work - especially if the bone loss is substantial. Physicians at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center are using a technique called impaction grafting in patients needing hip revision surgery. Pieces of the bone grafts are packed into the bone, acting like a patch on the areas of bone loss.