Mr David Woodnutt is a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Sancta Maria Hospital, Swansea, specialising in lower limb arthroplasty. He has completed nearly 9,500 joint replacement procedures, including more than 1,000 revisions, and has an established subspecialty interest in hip and knee replacement in younger and more active patients.

Mr Woodnutt’s career is notable not only for his clinical volume and research contributions, but for a genuinely unusual background: he began his career as a Synthetic Organic Chemist at the Open University before attending Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School.

Specialist Interests

• Primary total hip replacement
• Primary total knee replacement
• Hip and knee replacement in younger and active patients
• Revision hip and knee replacement
• Young patient hip disease
• Long-term implant performance and follow-up

Conditions Treated and Procedures Offered at Sancta Maria Hospital

• Total hip replacement
• Total knee replacement
• Hip and knee replacement in younger patients
• Revision hip replacement
• Revision knee replacement
• Hip and knee pain assessment and management

Innovation and NHS Achievements

During his NHS career at Morriston Hospital, Mr Woodnutt introduced several innovations that transformed the delivery of arthroplasty care in Wales:

• Introduced the first Surgical Assistant and Pre-Assessment in Wales and set up the first ring-fenced ward for arthroplasty, reducing the average length of stay from 14 days to less than 3 days, lowering infection rates and improving throughput, for which he received a Welsh Assembly Award in 2005
• Established a prospective arthroplasty database collecting research and follow-up data 10 years before the commencement of the National Joint Registry, for which he later served as Regional Clinical Coordinator for 12 years
• Pioneered the introduction of Dynamic Pelvic Motion analysis for acetabular cup positioning in conjunction with Corin (UK) Ltd

Research and Publications

Mr Woodnutt has published and presented extensively at educational courses and international conferences, including the Orthopedic Summit in Bangkok. He is currently a peer reviewer for Hip International, the Bone and Joint Journal and the European Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery. His ongoing research interests include the mathematics of long-term follow-up, implant performance and wear-related analysis of hip replacements.

Humanitarian and Overseas Work

Mr Woodnutt has travelled extensively providing orthopaedic care in Bangladesh and South Africa, and was the first orthopaedic surgeon to visit the islands of St Helena and Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. He also periodically visits the Falkland Islands to provide orthopaedic care.

Training and Background

Mr Woodnutt qualified from Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School with his MB from the University of London in 1990 and completed his orthopaedic surgical training in South Wales, with a fellowship in Exeter in 2000. He was appointed to a substantive consultant post in Swansea in 2001 and left the NHS in 2018 to practise fully privately.

Professional Memberships

• Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (Trauma and Orthopaedics) FRCS(Tr & Orth)
• Reviewer, Hip International
• Reviewer, Bone and Joint Journal
• Reviewer, European Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery