60 years since 'game changing' breakthrough in hip replacements found at Wrightington Hospital

• Video report by Granada Reports Journalist Jennifer Buck

Medical professionals are still learning from the work of a professor who discovered the hip replacement in Wigan - 60 years on from the pioneering moment.

Consultant John Charnley was part of the medical race to ease hip pain, by using long-lasting hip replacements involving a metal joint being inserted into a plastic socket.

The 'game changing' procedure was first performed in November 1962.

It made Wrightington, in Wigan, the leading light and meant surgeons travelled from all over the world to be trained at the hospital.

Professor Martyn Porter, a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, said: "It was really quite a scary thing to do.

"There was a race in innovation from several centres across the UK to try and solve the hip replacement because it is quite complicated to put artificial materials into the human body safely and not to reject it."

Now, around 250,000 hip replacements are carried out in England and Wales every year.

Tristram Charnley, Sir John Charnley's son, helps run the charitable trust set up in his father's name, and says he is proud to keep his father's memory and achievements alive.

"No-one had seen anything like it before and what was done then has changed very little in this 60 years only incremental changes," he said.

Wrightington Hospital is now a centre of excellence for joint replacements and can offer a 'day case' where patients can have the operation and be home in a day.

Mike Watson, 73, chose to have a double hip replacement at Wrightington Hospital, after his hip pain put an end to his active lifestyle.

Now, he is a picture of health, saying: "I don't even think about my hips. It's great I am climbing and I'm cycling again."

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