| Abstrakt: |
The replacement of hip and knee joints has been a standard surgical procedure for decades. Around 1.3 million hip replacements and 1.0 million knee replacements are conducted annually worldwide, in Germany about 150,000 hip prostheses and around 100,000 knee prostheses are implanted (Bundesgeschäftsstelle Qualitätssicherung GGmbH 2006, Bundésgeschäftsstelle Qualitätssicherung GGmbH 2006; The Institute for Orthopaedics 2007). Up to a few years ago, the life of an endoprosthesis frequently exceeded the life expectancy of the patient. However, demographic trends along with increasing life expectancy mean that revision arthroplasty is becoming more importan (Sculco 1993). Thus in Sweden from 1995 to 2000 already around 8% of the hip total prostheses were revised and from 1995 to 2004 around 6% of the knee total prostheses (Kärrholm et al. 2007; Lidgren and Robertsson 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
