"Had he got the surgery done in the US, he would have become a guinea pig for a clinical trial by an inexperienced doctor, he said"
There is some truth to this statement. Many community surgeons in the US are traveling to Birmingham to learn this technique, returning to US to try it on their own patients. Some don't even bother to go to Birmingham, rather go to Canada or wherever they are teaching Birmingham hips.
Let's face it: with any relatively new technique, there will be a thousands of patients who become "guinea pigs" for lack of better term for their local orthopaedic surgeon. But patients don't know this. Last month, I scrubbed on a Birmingham hip for a 43 year old lady...the surgeon had just returned from Birmingham 2 weeks earlier and it was his first one!
Now there is no way of getting around this. Surgeons have to learn newer techniques and the way to learn is to do it! Obviously need proper training but at one point or another, it will be your first case of --fill in the blank --.