"As the baby boomers now reach the stage where their joints are wearing out the numbers are exponentially increasing." Doctor Thomas P. Sculco, Surgeon-in-Chief at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, notes how many hip replacements surgeons are performing today and how that number is only going up.

Dr. Sculco



We have a very active population, and people are active in their 80s and their 90s. They want to be up and about and return to activities and enjoy their lives. We're currently doing about 400,000-500,000 hip replacements and about the same number of knee replacements. Those numbers will probably triple over the next 20 years. So as they baby boomers now reach the stage where their joints are wearing out the numbers are exponentially increasing in terms of the need for this operation. We have a very active population, and people are active in their 80s and their 90s. And so they don't want to sit around. They're driving the system. They want to be up and about and return to activities and enjoy their lives.