Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I will add what I can to that, and any part I do not quite cover in this response I will have to take on notice for the Minister for Health and Ageing to add to. Information I have is that the NJRR data indicates that the reliability of prostheses varies and, according to the NJRR 2008 annual report, there is wide-ranging variation in revision rates for hip femoral stems. According to the NJRR’s 2008 annual report, the hip femoral stem with the lowest revision rate has over 1,000 observed component years. However, the NJRR report indicates that this stem is only used in about one per cent of hip replacement surgeries. According to the NJRR report, the next lowest revision rate for a femoral stem is three to four times higher. What the report also tells us is that these femoral stems can cost somewhere in the order of $2,100 on the prostheses list, while others can be up to $7,000. This does not mean that other prostheses— (Time expired)