Background: It has been shown before that when compared with the medial para-patellar approach, the mid-vastus approach for TKR results in less post-operative pain for patients and more rapid recovery of straight leg raise. As far as we are aware the post-operative length of stay of the two groups of patients has not been compared. We postulated that the reduced pain and more rapid recovery of straight leg raise would translate into an earlier, safe, discharge home for the mid-vastus patients compared with those who underwent a traditional medial para-patellar approach.

Methods: Twenty patients operated on by each of five established knee arthroplasty surgeons were evaluated prospectively with regard to their pre and post-operative range of movement, time to achieve straight leg raise post-operatively and length of post-operative hospital stay. One of the surgeons performed the mid-vastus approach, and physiotherapists recorded the measurements.

Results: The results were analysed using a standard statistical software package, and although the mean length of stay was lower for the mid-vastus patients, the difference did not reach a level of significance (p= 0.13). The time taken to achieve straight leg raise post-operatively was significantly less in the mid-vastus group (p< 0.001).

Conclusion: Although this study confirms previous findings that the mid-vastus approach reduces the time taken for patients to achieve straight leg raise, when compared with the medial para-patellar approach, on its own it does not translate into a significantly shorter length of hospital stay.

In order to reduce the length of post-operative hospital stay with an accelerated rehabilitation program for TKR, a multi-disciplinary approach is required.

We report experience of 207 consecutive metal on metal hip resurfacings in 179 patients, implanted by one surgeon since January 2002. The mean age at operation was 56 years (35 – 78 years) and follow-up ranged from 12 to 84 months (mean 39 months). The gender mix was 2:1 M: F. The Birmingham Hip Resurfacing was implanted in the first 155 cases with a switch to Finsbury Adept Hip Resurfacing for the remaining 52 cases.

Data was obtained on all but one patient. There were four unrelated deaths (1.9%). No primary infections and no femoral neck fractures were encountered. One secondary infection at five years was salvaged by surgery and antibiotic treatment (0.5%). One male suffered a pertrochanteric fracture as a result of significant violence 15 months after operation (0.5%). Dislocation in five cases was the commonest complication encountered (2.4%). One of these cases developed recurrent dislocation and underwent early revision to a constrained total hip replacement (0.5%). This was the only failure in the series and no further revisions are pending.

Our survivorship results compare very favourably with outcomes reported from centres of excellence and far exceed the survivorship estimates published by the National Joint Registry.