There have been numerous alarming headlines lately about all-metal hip implants, but now there’s some good news. A new study published in the British Medical Journal found that patients getting metal-on-metal hip replacements have no additional cancer risk.
There have been many reports about metal hips having a high failure rate and that they leach metal ions into patients’ bodies. In the study, carried out by the Universities of Bristol and Exeter in England, cancer rates in patients with metal-on-metal hip replacements were compared with both a group of patients who had other hip bearing surfaces implanted and the general population.
Results show that the chance of a 60-year-old man with moderate health and a metal-on-metal stemmed hip replacement being diagnosed with cancer in the five years following surgery is 6.2 percent, compared to 6.7 percent chance with hip replacement using other bearing surfaces. For women, these figures were 4 percent for metal hip replacements and 4.4 percent for other types of artificial hips.
The authors wrote that the “risk of cancer for hip replacement patients is relatively low” with no evidence of an increase in cancer associated with metal-on-metal hips.
Some orthopedic surgeons have stopped using the metal implants over concerns that they may fail after a few years and have to be replaced. The FDA recently ordered a review of their safety.
About 270,000 hip replacements are performed each year in the U.S.