37 Facts About John Charnley

John Charnley pioneered the hip replacement operation, which is one of the most common operations both in the UK and elsewhere in the world, and created the "Wrightington centre for hip surgery".

John Charnley demonstrated the fundamental importance of bony compression in operations to arthrodese joints, in particular the knee, ankle and shoulder.

John Charnley was born in Bury, in Lancashire, on 29 August 1911.

John Charnley's father, Arthur Walker Charnley, was a chemist and had a chemist's shop at 25 Princess Street; his mother, Lily, had trained as a nurse at Crumpsall Hospital.

John Charnley went to the Bury Grammar Junior School in 1919, moving on to the Senior school in 1922.

John Charnley had a scientific aptitude and was encouraged to study chemistry and physics.

From 15 August 1935, John Charnley was appointed a House Surgeon at the Central Branch of Manchester Royal Infirmary in Roby Street, and after three months he went to the main Infirmary where he completed his year as House Surgeon.

John Charnley planned to achieve the status of Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons as soon as possible and, after having attended the fellowship course at Guy's Hospital in London, he passed the final examination on 10 December 1936.

John Charnley obtained the post of Resident Surgical Officer at Salford Royal Hospital on 1 January 1937, and after 21 months he unsuccessfully applied for the similar post at Manchester Royal Infirmary.

John Charnley then realised the career opportunities presented by research work and was appointed as a demonstrator in physiology at King's College London in October 1938.

John Charnley joined the troops as a volunteer in the Royal Army Medical Corps on 1 May 1940 and, after a training period, he was posted to Dover as a Regimental Medical Officer.

John Charnley participated in the British evacuation of Dunkirk and, subsequently, he was sent to 31st General Hospital at Hellingly, East Sussex.

John Charnley then moved to Davyhulme Park Hospital and later to the General Hospital at Garrioch.

Buxton had a high opinion of John Charnley and gave him more responsibilities by sending him to the 2nd Orthopaedic Centre and putting him in charge of the new orthopaedic workshop.

John Charnley was promoted to the rank of Acting Major on 2 December 1942.

John Charnley ended his military service in May 1944, when he joined the orthopaedics staff at Shaftesbury Hospital.

One of these was the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital at Gobowen, near Oswestry in Shropshire, and Harry Platt recommended that John Charnley went there in order to improve his skills as an orthopaedic surgeon.

John Charnley was resident in the hospital for six months in 1946, during which he developed his interest in bone grafting.

Thereafter, John Charnley returned to Manchester, again with the support of Platt, who had brought to the Royal Infirmary a group of young and brilliant orthopaedic specialists, which included Lloyd Griffiths.

John Charnley was interested in two basic orthopaedic problems: the effect of compression on the healing of cancellous bone, and the lubrication of joints.

John Charnley was convinced that collaborations with mechanical engineers, with whom he developed strong relationships, were fundamental to expanding his knowledge and improving his work.

John Charnley's research was based on two different aspects: clinical, for the treatment of patients with osteoarthritis, and biomechanical, with experiments to determine the fundamentals of bony union and the conditions governing the spontaneous regeneration of articular cartilage.

John Charnley finally opted for this path in 1958, informing the Manchester Royal Infirmary surgeons' committee that he wished to hand over three of his four clinical sessions in order to set up a hip surgery centre at Wrightington Hospital, Lancashire.

John Charnley organised a fund raising campaign for this purpose and the laboratory opened on 23 June 1961.

John Charnley disagreed with that theory; through his experiments, he was able to demonstrate that the low friction does not depend on the fluid presence.

John Charnley's determination pushed him to seek an alternate material.

John Charnley continued to test various materials, until a salesman approached him offering Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, which he rejected because of his lack of understanding of the problem; his assistant told him privately that he would endeavor to test it.

John Charnley collaborated very closely with the firm of Chas.

John Charnley refined his hip replacement operation throughout his long association with Thackray's and was still working on improvements when he died.

At first Thackray's made the stainless steel stems, while John Charnley made the sockets himself, turning them on a lathe in his workshop at home.

John Charnley was convinced that the best way to fix the prosthesis into the femur was to use bone cement that acted as a grout rather than as a glue and that interlocked the two parts.

John Charnley believed that the cement had to have some essential features:.

John Charnley realised that it was of fundamental importance to retrieve the artificial joints from patients who had died some years after the surgery, in order to study the wear of the materials and the tissue changes, thus enabling improvements in the procedure.

The huge number of wound infection cases after hip replacement operations pushed John Charnley to put effort in the prevention field; he was involved in the research of a method to keep bacteria away from the wound during surgery.

John Charnley understood that another source of contamination was through the surgeon's gown, and he developed a full-body gown that incorporated an exhaust system.

John Charnley is recognised as the founder of modern hip replacement.

John Charnley was awarded the 1975 Lister Medal for his contributions to surgical science.