Fig. 1.

These and several other young patients in our series who had extensive pre-operative cystic destruction of the femoral head often from long-term anti-inflammatory intake, or had severe avascular necrosis of the femoral head, have continued to have good hip function and unremarkable radiology 10–13 years after their resurfacing. There are others with such bone loss, who suffered femoral failures, as described in this paper. Based on our evidence we no longer perform or advise a resurfacing in the presence of this degree of femoral head damage