Hip replacement surgery at Spire Edinburgh Hospitals Murrayfield and Shawfair Park

At Spire Edinburgh Hospitals, our orthopaedic (bone and muscle) teams are highly skilled and dedicated to providing top quality treatment and care that’s personalised to you.

We offer fast access to diagnostic tests and scans, so you don’t have to wait long to find out if treatment is right for you.

At Spire Edinburgh Hospitals, we have vast experience in hip replacement surgery in our modern facilities. We also offer some of the latest surgical innovations, which may be beneficial to some patients. These include:

• Minimally invasive surgery, which uses smaller incisions than traditional techniques, resulting in faster recovery
• Anterior hip replacement surgery, when incisions are made in the front of the hip, resulting in less pain and faster recovery than with traditional surgery
• Bilateral hip replacement, when both hips are replaced at the same time
• MAKO Robotic Arm Assisted Surgery – a robotic arm enables a high degree of accuracy and precision when placing implants
• Computer-assisted technology to create a 3D model of your hip to assist your surgeon during the operation

Getting here

We're an approximate 20 minute drive east from Edinburgh Airport or 10 minutes west from Haymarket train station. We also have free parking on-site for you and your visitors.

Your consultations

For your appointments, you’ll meet your consultant in one of our consultation rooms.

Our orthopaedic consultants specialise in diagnosing and treating musculoskeletal (bone and muscle) conditions. Here’s what will happen before your treatment:

• If you haven’t been diagnosed yet, your consultant may recommend our advanced scanning, imaging and diagnostic technologies to look at your hip and help understand the cause of your pain or mobility problems
• Once you’ve been diagnosed or if you have a referral, your consultant will then discuss treatment options with you
• Before recommending a hip replacement, your consultant may suggest hydrocortisone joint injections first

You’ll have an opportunity to ask questions and discuss your expectations. Your consultant will then be able to outline a treatment and care plan that’s tailored to you.

When you come in for your operation, you’ll be with us for three to five days.

If you’ve come with a friend or family member, they’re welcome to wait in our lounge while you have your operation.

Here’s what will happen once you arrive at Spire Edinburgh Hospitals for your hip replacement operation:

• You’ll meet your healthcare team
• You'll have either a general anaesthetic, where you’re unconscious, or an epidural or spinal anaesthetic, where you're numb from the waist down
• If you have an epidural or spinal anaesthetic, your anaesthetist can also give you a sedative to help you relax
• Once the anaesthetic has taken effect, your surgeon will make one or more incisions in your hip, remove both the socket and the top of your thigh bone and replace them with a new artificial hip joint
• The operation should take between an hour and an hour and a half

After your operation, you’ll start your recovery back in your private room.

One of our physiotherapists will want to get you up and about as soon as you’re ready. They’ll also give you advice on how to improve your recovery using special exercises after hip replacement.

Our nursing team will give you pain relief to help you deal with pain after your hip replacement surgery.

Although everybody’s different and you should always follow your consultant’s advice, here’s a typical recovery timeline for hip replacement surgery: