The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has issued new draft guidelines for the use and expected performance of hip replacement devices. According to the NICE’s proposed guidance, such devices will be “recommended as treatment options… only if [they have] a rate (or projected rate) of revision of less than 5% at 10 years.” The new guidance will decrease the acceptable revision rate by one half from the current standard of 10% or less at 10 years.

The new, stricter benchmark is based on additional performance data for hip devices that has accumulated since the previous NICE guidance was implemented in 2000. The evaluation of this additional evidence produced a predicted revision rate of 4.6% at 10 years for total hip replacement devices.

According to Professor Carole Longson, Director of the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at NICE, this “proposed improvement to the benchmark for the revision rate is good news for people with hip [devices as] more people can expect their prostheses to continue working well over 10 years.”

NICE is an independent organization whose existing recommendations on the acceptable performance of hip implants are authoritative and well accepted throughout the hip device industry. It issued the new proposed guidance at the request of the United Kingdom’s Department of Health.

Sources:

NICE draft guidance, http://guidance.nice.org.uk/TAG/307/Consultation/DraftGuidance

NICE press release regarding the draft guidance,http://www.nice.org.uk/newsroom/pressreleases/NICEDraftGuidanceRecommendsMoreReliableArtificialJoints.jsp