excerpt
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1244324,000600030008.htm

Robert Walter Beeney was unable to walk due to a stiff hip when he
landed in India January 24. Twenty days later, he not only recovered
after a rare hip replacement surgery at Apollo Hospital here but also
visited the famous Taj Mahal in Agra after that.

The 64-year-old real estate consultant from San Francisco underwent
successful surface replacement surgery using the anatomic surface
replacement (ASR) hip system January 27, reportedly becoming the first
US national to come to India for the treatment.

Another patient from Florida will be landing in Chennai for a similar
procedure at the Apollo Hospital there later this week.

A team of doctors, led by orthopaedic surgeon Vijay Bose, carried out
the procedure for Beeney.

Jayaramchander Pingle, a member of the medical team, told a news
conference on Tuesday that while in the conventional hip replacement
surgery, the total hip was replaced, in the new system, the patient's
original head and neck of femur were preserved and only their surface
is replaced with metal on metal articulation.

With the use of very advanced metallurgy in this device, the wear and
tear is reduced to a fraction in the artificial joint as opposed to
the conventional total hip replacement.

Another advantage of the latest procedure is that in the event of any
problem that may occur in the long term, the conventional total hip
replacement can be done at a later stage.

Beeney, who came to know about the procedure in India through the
Internet, said that since this was not yet cleared by the US Food and
Drug Administration, he decided to come to India.

"This is despite the fact that the device that is fixed in the hip is
made in the US," he said.

He also had other options like going to Britain or Belgium for
treatment. "But I preferred India as the treatment costs there are
huge," he said.

The treatment in India cost him $6,600 (Rs 300,000) while the same as
a part of clinical trial in US would have cost $24,000. Even in
Britain, where this procedure was first developed a few years ago, it
would have cost 12,000 pounds.

Sangita Reddy, executive director of Apollo Hospitals, hoped that
doors of the $1.7 trillion US healthcare industry would now open for
Indian hospitals.

While the patients from Afro-Asian countries, the Middle East, Canada,
Britain and other parts of the world had been coming to India,
Beeney's case was significant as he chose India after a thorough
research, she added.

The Apollo group, one of Asia's largest private healthcare providers,
gets seven per cent of its turnover from international patients. The
group's total turnover during 2003-04 was Rs 5 billion.

The Apollo group in India treated 43,000 foreign patients during the
last three and a half years.