2009 Charnley Awards
two Canadian teams are recipients 

This year, at its winter general meeting in Las Vegas, the Hip Society recognized the outstanding work of two Canadian clinical research teams - one in Quebec and the other in BC - with one of the international Society's highest honours, the prestigious John Charnley Award.

At Montreal's Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital Research Centre, researchers Drs. Martin Lavigne, Pascal-André Vendittoli and Alain Roy, in collaboration with kinesiologists Marc Therrien, Julie Nantel and François Prince, have been conducting comparative studies of hip-resurfacing versus large-diameter metal-on-metal total hip prostheses. After a first phase of study, they were able to demonstrate that hip resurfacing exhibited some functional superiority over large-diameter hip prostheses and had a comparatively low risk of loosening. In a follow-up, blinded, prospective trial, for which they won this year's Charnley Award, the researchers used Vicon cameras in the hospital's ambulation clinic to compare functionality between the two procedures and concluded that results after six months were equivalent - except that hip-resurfacing has the obvious advantage of conserving the femur. Speaking for the research team, lead investigator Dr. Lavigne says they were overjoyed, since the Charnley Award was "the highest honour we could ever have hoped to receive."

A separate Charnley Award was given to Drs. Donald Garbuz, Bas Masri, Clive Duncan and Nelson Greidanus of UBC and the Vancouver General Hospital, as well as Dr. Michael Tanzer of McGill University in recognition of their prospective, multi-centre, randomized trial that compared the outcomes of metal-on-metal hip-resurfacing against large-diameter metal-on-metal total hip prostheses. The research team, which also included Drs. Robert Korbyl and Timothy J. Pearce from Red Deer, Alberta, discovered that joint function and quality of life post-recovery were the same for both groups, but that patients receiving total hip replacement had cobalt levels 10 times higher than those who received resurfacing. Also, the level of chromium in the total hip replacement group was 2.6 times higher. As a precaution - given the wealth of medical literature discussing host sensitivities and metal ion release - the team reported its findings early and halted all surgeries with this particular prosthesis. "All of the patients in this study are functioning well," says lead investigator Dr. Garbuz, "so we don't know if it's a clinical concern." The findings are due to be published this year in the Journal of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research.