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Pioneering Hip Replacement Surgery...

Around 50,000 people a year in the UK have their lives transformed by a hip replacement operation.

Many of these people have been in excruciating pain for years, barely able to walk, let alone take part in an active lifestyle.

Their new pain-free mobility is in no small part due to Action Medical Research funding which helped a distinguished orthopaedic surgeon to develop a technique that became the forerunner of modern hip replacement surgery.

Pioneering work had begun as early as the 1920s by European and US surgeons performing partial hip replacements, known as hemiarthroplasties.

But the complete replacement was primarily a British affair with some of the first successful operations carried out by Sir John Charnley and his team at Wrightington Hospital, Wigan, in the early 1960s.

Action Medical Research helped Sir John establish a clinical research centre for hip surgery where his revolutionary work was carried out. The Charity has continued to support many other projects over the years to further develop and refine the hip replacement procedure.

Action Medical Research’s history

The charity was originally founded in 1952, by Duncan Guthrie, in his quest to find a cure for polio, a condition that blighted the lives of many thousands of children including his own daughter Janet. Early research funded by the charity led to the development and rapid adoption of the first polio vaccine which eradicated new cases of the disease in the UK.

Since then the charity has developed an extraordinary track record in supporting some of the most significant medical breakthroughs in recent history – breakthroughs that have helped save thousands of children’s lives and changed many more.

Their successes:

Children have always been at the heart of what the charity does. Here are just some of their key success:

Helping more babies be born healthy by:

·         helping introduce ultrasound scanning in pregnancy

·         discovering the importance of taking folic acid before and during pregnancy to prevent spina bifida

·         developing an infra-red scanner to help minimise the risk of brain damage in babies

·         developing a new state-of-the-art fetal heart rate monitor to make pregnancy safer for babies at risk

·         showing that a special cap that cools the brain can minimise brain damage in some newborn babies deprived of oxygen at birth, reducing the risk of death and severe disability.

Supporting children with disabilities by:

·         developing a revolutionary growing prosthesis – artificial limb bone – for children whose bones have been destroyed by tumours

·         creating the award winning adjustable Matrix Seating System to help support physically disabled children as they grow

·         devising the Paediatric Pain Profile to help parents and health professionals to assess and relieve pain in severely disabled children.

Protecting children from infections by:

·         supporting the lead researcher whose team helped establish a vaccine for meningitis

·         testing the early rubella vaccine – now part of the MMR vaccine

Finding the causes of rare diseases by:

·         identifying the genes responsible for rare and devastating conditions such as, Von Hippel-Lindau disease – which causes tumours to grow on many parts of the body, Van der Woude syndrome - a form of cleft lip and palate, and for the hereditary skin condition incontinentia pigment – which causes severe blistering of the skin.

Although the research they have funded has helped save and change so many children’s lives, there is still so much more to learn about what triggers diseases, how to prevent them and how to develop effective new treatments and find the best ways to care for sick babies and children.  Today, Action Medical Research plays a vital role as the leading UK-wide medical research charity dedicated to helping babies and children.