Newcastle University

PEALS has joined forces with the Department of Mechanical and Systems Engineering at Newcastle University to explore the experiences of people who have had metal-on-metal hip joint replacements.

Until recently, hip joint replacement was one of the medical success stories of the 20th century.  Now, throughout the world some of the latest designs of hip joint replacements are failing in their thousands and causing health problems for the people concerned.

PEALS will be working with patients, their families and patient groups to document the effect on their lives of having a failed, or potentially failed, hip replacement.  We will examine their hopes and expectations for joint replacement and how trust in medicine, doctors and regulatory systems has been affected.

This project brings together experiences of patients, engineers, clinicians and regulators in order to document ‘lessons learned’ from these recent failures.

More details at http://research.ncl.ac.uk/metalhip/  or twitter @metalhip_ncl