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How does hip replacement practice really differ from one country to the next? Researcher Irrum Afzal joins the AHF Podcast to discuss the Global Arthroplasty Practice Survey (GAPS) — the first effort to map how surgeons worldwide actually perform total hip replacement.

Despite roughly seventy years of modern hip replacement, there's still no global consensus on the fundamentals — surgical approach, fixation, bearing surface, or the perioperative pathway. National joint registries capture some of this, but their coverage and data quality vary widely, and many countries have no registry at all. The result is that we know surprisingly little about how the operation is actually performed around the world.

Irrum Afzal, a researcher at Imperial College London and a digital health transformation specialist, is working to close that gap. Co-led with Professor Richard Field, GAPS asks surgeons of every volume and career stage to describe their real preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative practice. It takes under ten minutes, covers the full patient journey, and is built to feed a long-term dataset that machine learning can eventually turn into research priorities and a working global consensus.

Along the way, Irrum explains how her study on the accuracy of National Joint Registry revision data shaped her thinking about data quality, why anterior approach adoption ranges from around 1% in the UK to 56% in the US, and what surgeon-reported practice data can add to what registries already collect. If you perform hip replacement, your answers help build the first real worldwide picture of the field — and the survey is open through 30 June.

Take the Survey Here: https://tinyurl.com/GAPSHIPS
Visit the Working Group: https://www.globalarthroplastypractice.com/

⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and guest background
01:40 How a public health researcher moved into orthopaedics
02:48 Why hip revision registry data is often inaccurate
04:46 What the Global Arthroplasty Practice Survey measures
07:14 Why hip replacement practice still varies worldwide
08:42 Who runs GAPS and how to join the working group
10:08 Why surgeons should take the survey and what they gain
13:18 Using AI to turn survey responses into research priorities
14:01 How many responses GAPS needs and the June 30th deadline
16:50 What success looks like and sharing data with registries
19:05 Presenting GAPS results at the European Anterior Hip Meeting

Listen to the AHF Podcast on your preferred platform:
Buzzsprout: https://ahfpodcast.buzzsprout.com
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ahf-podcast/id1749521487
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5CrGJyvRiQFTCU3FFFVvHc
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/ahf-podcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@anteriorhipfoundation
Homepage: https://anteriorhipfoundation.com

This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only.
The content discussed does not constitute medical advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional judgment. Clinicians should rely on their own training, experience, and clinical decision-making when applying information from this discussion.

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#HipReplacement #TotalHipArthroplasty #THA #AnteriorApproach #JointRegistry #NationalJointRegistry #OrthopaedicResearch #GAPS #IrrumAfzal #HipRevision #ArthroplastyData