ODEP has been asked to advice specialities outside orthopaedics with a view to them taking up the ODEP philosophy for implants used in their speciality. These specialities include vascular, cardiac, gynaecological, plastic and urological surgery.

Within Orthopaedics there have been recent requests for us to develop ODEP and Beyond Compliance for Patello-Femoral Replacements (PFJs) and Revision Implants.

ODEP are looking to run a pilot that would help indicate whether introducing PFJs is a viable and worthwhile investment.

ODEP has been evaluating the need for benchmarking revision prostheses and has scoped the issues involved. It is likely this initiative will be put to manufacturers and other interested parties in the near future. Given the complexity and expense of revision prostheses it could be asked why ODEP has not undertaken this responsibility before. The main reason is that only more recently have registries accumulated sufficient revision data to make it remotely possible. We have undertaken a scoping exercise to show that it is indeed possible. We have shown that “infection” does not make such an exercise impossible. The launch date for revision prostheses is presently under review.

ODEP will always be available to help any institution that wishes to introduce a system that will protect patients from poor implants and promote the best ones.

The question, where do we stop has been raised. In the next 10 years we will have 25 year data from the registries. Only nearer the time will we have any idea of what this data looks like in terms of death rate, size of cohorts etc. Doubtless the public will want to know what lasts 25 years and what doesn’t.