Yes Mrs D, they do the Birmingham hip resurfacing here, its still a total hip replacement but the only diferance is they preserve more of the femur bone head, actually one of the orthopedic surgeons i seen at the hospital did mention that, but after a few ortho's had a bit of a conferance about it, they decided it wouldn't be appropiate in my case, for fear of a very possible bone fracture as i am a big bloke [not fat] and there's a lot of pressure on that bone and through past experience they have fractured on heavy people, then they said i would have to go through the whole operation again to fix it.
They said they have had a lot of success long term with Total Hip replacements using metal on metal [ stainless steel acetabulam with a stainless steel protheses], but thanks for the good suggestion anyway.