Who am I?

 I am a man born 1953 who had hip problems for about nine years. In 2006 I got tired of the long waiting on the doctors and the health care system in Sweden. I wanted to get rid of the painkillers and supplements that made life a little more bearable but weren’t a solution for any of this. I even wanted to be freed from the side effects of all the tablets and possible permanent damage they could cause to inner organs. After a first remark from my wife and some research I learned that there was a so-called Hip Resurfacing prosthesis that should be best and from there on all my efforts went into obtaining one of them.

Things developed from there largely in the way I wanted. Under autumn 2006 I sent a request for pre-authorization for an operation in Belgium to “Försäkringskassan”, the Swedish Medicare equivalent and this was approved the middle of December. Following an email message to my surgeon Koen De Smet in Belgium I received his reply within hours that I was welcome for the operation on the 23rd of January 2007. For someone who had been plagued by hip problems in soon nine years this was naturally great news!

How this continued and how I woke up:

From my obvious need to get more information about “Hip Resurfacinng” I called different hospitals and even tried to contact orthopedic surgeons in Sweden. This proved itself to be a very time consuming exercise, since (Swedish) surgeons do not easily maintain direct contact with patients by email. The BHR prosthesis that the surgeon Derek McMinn from Birmingham in England further developed from an earlier similar prosthesis was the one that I wanted to have. Apart from BHR there were in those days already the ASR and Durom (that meanwhile have been taken out of production) plus the Conserve Plus, Cormet, ReCap and Adept. Today there are in total 15 different makes. Under the subject “Hip Resurfacing” on my website you can find some images in the slider. You will notice small differences in all the resurfacing devices shown.

It did not take long for me to find out that the personnel in hospitals and even in the orthopedic departments of Swedish hospitals missed the required knowledge about the Hip Resurfacing prosthesis. Each time I rang and had to try and explain in very simple wording for the often non-technical personnel what a Hip Resurfacing was exactly it became too technical for them and I was usually connected to a next person. Often I had to repeat myself and the description of the prosthesis for one to the next person and I myself did not get anywhere!

Even with the doctors that I visited in connection with my hip problems I noticed that the technical facets surrounding the method were completely unknown. If I searched for information on the Internet to get information about Hip Resurfacing I once again was astonished that there was nothing found on any Swedish websites taking up this subject. This was for me the signal that Swedish patients really need to be informed in their own language about the good alternative “Hip Resurfacing”.

Hip Resurfacing has many incredible advantages over the conventional hip prosthesis that I will gladly show you. In the menu under “Hip Resurfacing” you can find the table that I made, showing the advantages and disadvantages of the two groups of prostheses. Hopefully this will help you but I will be happy to further explain everything. You will probably have noticed that the Swedish hospitals mainly use the conventional  THR or THA method and keep the Hip Resurfacing method hidden or at best give information that does not agree with the truth as I know it from contact that I had with now well over 1000 persons.

This page was created in an attempt to inform and ultimately help Swedish and foreign hip patients that were caught in a similar vicious circle as I found myself in earlier. It is my hope that this site gives you some tools to arrive at a good solution for your hip problem!

I have not received a formal medical education, that what I learned is all from the contacts with hip patients all over the world and the help I’ve been given by many international specialized orthopedic surgeons. I have been present in a number of operations with this method to be able and form an even better opinion and with it hopefully be able and help you as hip patient.

Ron van Mierlo  May 2015