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We have investigated whether patient reported outcomes provided by patients with Birmingham Hip Resurfacing (BHR) changed after negative media coverage of metal-on-metal (MOM) hip replacement. We also investigated whether patients whose procedures were performed by a designer surgeon behaved differently to those performed elsewhere. 1178 consecutive BHR procedures performed between January 2002 and December 2006, by one of the designer surgeons in his private practice, were reviewed. We also reviewed 402 BHRs undertaken by two non-designer surgeons in both their NHS and private practice. 150 of the latter cohort were undertaken at an NHS hospital and 252 at an independent private hospital. All patients had annual Oxford Hip Scores (OHS) collected. We chose 2007 as pre-"media attention" and compared scores from this year against subsequent years. We found no clinically significant change in OHS between 2007 and subsequent years, at all centres. We conclude that negative media reporting does not appear to have had an impact on patients' perceived outcome after BHR. In consequence, patients who have undergone this type of hip resurfacing and show deterioration should be investigated.

Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) are used to gauge clinical performance. The PROMs outcome programme at our centre achieves a preoperative data capture rate of 99%. This falls to 90.6%, 89%, 83% and 79% at the six-week, six-month, one-year and two-year time points, respectively. The study aims were to determine factors associated with patients who did not respond to outcome questionnaires following total hip replacement (THR), and the potential implications this may have when assessing patients following THRs. During the first year of the PROMs programme, 1,322 patients underwent unilateral primary THR at our institution. Of these, 1,311 completed preoperative questionnaires. Thirty-eight patients (2.9%) died within two years of surgery and have been excluded. For the remaining 1,273 patients, we identified those who did not return postoperative questionnaires at each of our review time points. Younger age, lower baseline EQ5D and Oxford Hip scores (OHS) were significantly associated with non-response (p<0.001). Patients with lower satisfaction scores, OHS and EQ5D scores, were less likely to respond to subsequent questionnaires. A significant association between non-response and deprivation (p<0.001) was demonstrated. Our findings suggest that the more satisfied patients are over-represented and our reported outcome results are better than they would have been if all patients had responded. This phenomenon may apply to studies where those categorised as "lost to follow-up" represent a subset of patients who have disengaged due to poor outcome or satisfaction.