sorry to post so late.

First, I would run away from any doctor who "assured" a patient that there would be no nerve pain. I agree with Sue completely on this.

As to approach, I went with the newer, third approach: Superpath. It uses the least invasive approach of all. My surgeon walked into the outpatient surgery center holding a document of about ten pages in length and said something like: This is the hospital's instructions on what to do after a hip replacement. Don't bend over, etc. ". He then tossed it in the waste paper basket and said: I have only two instructions: (1) take your medicine; and (2) be a couch potato for five weeks because the one thing I can't do is make bones grow.

The medicine was oxycodone and Celebrex. The instructions were to take one oxy the first night, then continue it until I didn't need it any longer and then taper off. I had zero pain so the next morning I called and asked if I could skip the oxy. They said yes. Two days later I still had no pain and repeated the call regarding celebrex. Again they said sure...go ahead and stop it.

I never did have any pain from the implant.

But I have one very important caveat: As much as I prefer Superpath to Anterior and Anterior to Posterior, if the surgeon had done only ten superpaths and thousands of posteriors, and that was my only surgeon, I would go for the posterior. These are complex operations and you want someone who has done it a lot. Mine had done thousands of Superpaths.