Professor Robin Ling
Orthopaedic surgeon who revolutionised hip replacement
PROFESSOR ROBIN LING, who has died aged 90, was an orthopaedic surgeon whose contribution to hip replacement surgery has improved the quality of life for millions of people around the world.
Ling became interested in hip replacement surgery following his appointment as consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter in 1963. There were very few types of hip replacement available in the 1960s, and Ling sought to create an implant that could be securely fixed to the bony skeleton using acrylic bone cement.
He collaborated with Dr Clive Lee, an engineer at the University of Exeter, and designed a new implant that he believed would optimise chances of long-term success. The first Ling-lee hip was inserted in 1970 and the Exeter hip, as it is now known, is today the most implanted cemented hip replacement in the world, due to its outstanding durability. More than 100,000 Exeter stems are now implanted annually.
Ling’s observation of how the implant worked in the human body led to extensive research in the laboratories at Exeter, with the result that all major hip manufacturers now market an implant based on what is known as the “taper-slip” fixation approach.
Ling also developed sophisticated cementing techniques which have become standard clinical practice; over the decades thousands of surgeons from around the world have travelled to Exeter symposia and workshops to learn the principles and techniques he developed.
As hip surgery became more widely available, there was a need to develop new methods to revise implants that had failed, and which often involved severe destruction of bone.
Ling developed a technique known as Femoral Impaction Grafting, in which bone graft is inserted into large bone defects. He showed that the graft heals to augment the skeleton if it is loaded correctly, allowing patients to return to long-term pain-free function.
Robin Sydney Mackwood Ling was born on September 7 1927 and brought up in the West Riding of Yorkshire where his parents and grandfather were doctors. His grandfather was known as “old Dr Ling” and his father as “Dr Billy”.
Educated at Chelmsford Hall in Eastbourne, Ling was dispatched at the outbreak of war with his two younger brothers to Canada, where they lived with the Koerners, a philanthropic family who had emigrated to Canada from central Europe to escape the Nazis.
On returning to Britain he read Medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford, and St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. It was at St Mary’s that Ling met Mary Steedman, a casualty nurse born in South Africa, who was preparing to return to Cape Town to read Medicine having been awarded a scholarship. They married after a brief courtship and enjoyed 62 happy years together.
A man of great personal warmth and modesty, Ling carried the respect of all those with whom he worked and of the patients he treated. He served as president of many bodies including the British Orthopaedic Research Society, the British Orthopaedic Association, the British Hip Society (which he co-founded) and the International Hip Society. He was honorary professor of bioengineering at the University of Exeter.
Throughout his life Ling had a passion for sport. His love of sailing started during a residency on Vancouver Island and he and his brothers later persuaded their parents to buy a classic yacht, Veronique. He was involved in several Fastnet races. On retirement, he moved to the Dart estuary and fulfilled his ambition of owning his own sailing boat, aptly named Enfin.
He was appointed OBE in 1992 and is survived by his wife Mary and two daughters.
Professor Robin Ling, born September 7 1927, died October 9 2017