[Hip implant revision. Avoiding mistakes and managing risk]

Hip revision surgery may lead to unexpected complications, with a negative impact on the treatment outcome. To refer to possible difficulties as"mistakes" is less helpful than defining ways to foresee such difficulties and developing possible strategies to avoid them. This approach requires a comprehensive amount of personal experience, which may follow consideration of some basic"rules" and possible surgical scenarios before an intervention. The author presents an individual risk management approach that includes hints on how to foresee the occurrence of certain intraoperative difficulties and how to help avoid errors by incorporating forward-thinking strategies into hip revision surgery.