Pioneering surgeon visits Christchurch

Press, 28 February 1980, Page 6

Pioneering surgeon visits Christchurch

Christchurch was host yesterday to the man whos •surgical techniques have enabled thousands of disabled people to walk again without pain. Seventeen years ago Profe-ssor Sir John Charnley devised a new procedure' for. the replacement of arthritic hip joints. He and h>s wife were in Christchurch so that he could lecture to other othopaedic surgeons at Christchurch Hospital about his technique. The procedure, known as low-friction arthroplasty of the hip involves the replacement of an arthritic hip-leg joint with a metal ball • and a socket made of high-den-sity polyethylene. The natural hip joint con•sists of a ball-and-socket joint also: the top of the long thigh bone, or femur, is ball shaped and the cartil-age-lined hollow of the hipbone is the socket. When disease attacks this joint, bone grinds on bone and movement becomes painful. Previous work had been done in the field but the earlier techniques were not suc-

cessfui over long periods. Professor Charnley and his team disovered in 1962 the right plastic material and surgical technique to provide a smoothly functioning hip joint that would last. In 1977, his work was recognised when he was knighted by the Queen. Sir John said yesterday that part of the reason for his visit to Australia and New Zealand was to take part in a course teaching his technique. There had been variants in the technique

he had developed. “They don’t all do it my way,” said Sir John. Since he had made the breakthrough in 1962 refinements had been made to the technique. “It has been a life work and there is still a lot of work to be done in perfecting it'”

One area in which his technique had been improved wa«s in the prevention of infection. Hip-joint operations had to be done in conditions of extreme sterility. This was even more important than in routine surgery. The presence Of a large foreign body such as an artificial • joint, in living tissue made it very susceptible to infection. Sir John said he hoped that future work on the procedure would mean that people in middle age could have hip joints replaced in the absolute certainly that they would last for the rest of their lives. Failures occasionally occured usually because of the loosening of the cement which bonded the plastic and metal to the living bone.