Scottish Arthroplasty Project
Figures from January 2001 to December 2024

About this release

The Scottish Arthroplasty Project (SAP) was set up to improve care for patients who have joint replacement surgery (arthroplasty). This annual release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents data on the number of arthroplasty operations in Scotland that took place between 2001 and 2024 and on the frequency of complications, such as infection or revision surgery.

Main points

• The number of arthroplasty operations have now surpassed pre-pandemic levels. 17,399 first (primary) hip or knee replacements performed in NHSScotland hospitals in 2024 compared to 15,908 in 2019.

This chart show both primary hip and primary knee procedure from 2001 to 2024. Both follow a similar increasing trend from 2001 with a sharp decrease during 2020 which slowly increasing to 2024.

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Primary hip and knee arthroplasty procedures per year (2001-2024)

• Primary hip and knee replacement procedures performed in Scottish independent hospitals increased from 4,917 in 2023 to 5,220 in 2024. These procedures are carried out independently of NHS hospitals and not included in the chart above.
• Over the last 10 years the mean length of hospital stay, for both primary hip and primary knee procedures, has decreased from 5 days to 2.6 days.

Background

The Scottish Arthroplasty Project is one of the oldest arthroplasty registries in the world. It is a member of the International Society of Arthroplasty Registries. The Scottish Arthroplasty Project produces high quality data with the principal aim of providing quality assurance and adverse outcome monitoring of major joint replacement surgery within NHS Scotland.

The Scottish Arthroplasty Project analyses hospital inpatient information to monitor the number of complications following hip and knee replacements in Scotland, and to ensure that surgeons performing these operations do not have a higher-than-expected complication rate. Where there is a higher-than-expected number of complications following operations performed by a particular surgeon, the surgeon is notified and asked to investigate the reasons for the increased rate in complications and to develop an action plan to reduce their recurrence.

Further information

The next update of this publication will be 4 August 2026.