Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. May 18, 2016; 7(5): 272-279
Published online May 18, 2016. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v7.i5.272
Management of metal-on-metal hip implant patients: Who, when and how to revise?
Reshid Berber, John A Skinner, Alister J Hart
Reshid Berber, John A Skinner, Alister J Hart, Joint Reconstruction Unit, Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Sciences, Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, London HA7 4LP, United Kingdom
Author contributions: All listed authors were involved in the literature review and writing of this manuscript; all three authors contributed equally to this work.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they no conflict of interest; Skinner JA and Hart AJ have a consultancy agreement with Depuy and Stryker for metal on metal hip retrieval work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Reshid Berber, MBBS, BSc (Hons), MRCS (Eng), Orthopaedic Registrar and Research Fellow, Joint Reconstruction Unit, Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Sciences, Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Brockley Hill, Stanmore, London HA7 4LP, United Kingdom. reshidb@gmail.com
Telephone: +44-20-89095621 Fax: +44-20-89095100
Received: July 29, 2015
Peer-review started: July 29, 2015
First decision: September 30, 2015
Revised: January 12, 2016
Accepted: March 7, 2016
Article in press: March 9, 2016
Published online: May 18, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Evidence supporting the management of metal on metal hips is lacking, and guidance is open to interpretation. Until supporting evidence is available, an evidence based multi-disciplinary approach on a case-by-case basis is considered a safe method to help surgeons make decisions and potentially improve patient outcomes.