Scottish Arthroplasty Project
Figures from January 2001 to December 2023

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents data on the number of arthroplasty (joint replacement) operations in Scotland between 2001 and 2023 and on the frequency of complications such as infection or revision surgery following hip and knee replacements.

Main points

• Arthroplasty operations continue to improve towards pre-pandemic levels. 15,092 first (primary) hip or knee replacements performed in Scotland in 2023 compared to 15,908 in 2019.

This chart show both primary hip and primary knee procedure from 2001 to 2022. Both follow a similar increasing trend from 2001 with a sharp decrease during 2020 which slowly increasing to 2022.

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Primary hip and knee arthroplasty procedures per year (2001-2023)

• Length of stay continues to decrease for both hip and knee replacements. Mean length of a hip replacement stay decreased from 3.2 days in 2022 to 2.6 days in 2023. Knee replacement also decreased from 3.2 days in 2022 to 2.9 days in 2023.
• The percentage of patients who died within 90 days of a hip replacement increased from 0.3% in 2022 to 0.4% in 2023. Knee replacement also increased from 0.3% in 2022 to 0.4% in 2023 during the same period.

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

Further information can be found on the Scottish Arthroplasty Project website (external website).

The next update of this publication will be 5 August 2025.