Surface micro‐analyses of long‐term worn retrieved “Osteal™” alumina ceramic total hip replacement

Abstract

We analyzed wear pattern of long-term retrieved alumina-alumina hip prostheses from Osteal, which were implanted for 15-19 years. A comparison was carried out with our previous study of 17-year Biolox alumina-on-alumina hip prostheses, (Shishido et al., J Biomed Mater Res B 2003;67:638-647) and all-alumina total hip replacement run under microseparation simulator tests. Of particular interest was the occurrence of stripe wear in these first generation alumina ceramic bearings. Two balls of Osteal revealed only one stripe wear as did the respective liners on their rim areas. In these latter balls, the stripes were shallower than those previously observed in Biolox implants. A microscopic analysis of the bearing surface was carried out using scanning electron microscopy and fluorescence microprobe spectroscopy. On average, the Osteal retrievals had one grade lower wear than Biolox retrievals. Fluorescence microprobe maps showed that Biolox ball surfaces had higher compressive stress than the Osteal likely due to severe impingement and microseparation promoted by the bulky implant design.

Risk of Impingement and Third-body Abrasion With 28-mm Metal-on-metal Bearings

“…Stripe wear on femoral heads has been a common finding in CoC retrievals [16,20,54,62,70,75,76] but rarely mentioned in the MoM literature. It is possible that bearing damage could have been produced either by THA dislocation or alternatively by instruments used at revision surgery [8,30,60].…”

“…Retrieval studies of ceramic-on-ceramic (CoC) THA in particular have revealed ''normal'' wear mode produced by everyday activities as a circular wear pattern on the head and inside the cup [71,75]. There were also frequent reports of ''stripe'' wear across heads and around cup rims [15,54,62,71,77].…”

Interest of Raman spectroscopy for the study of dental material: The zirconia material example

“…The stress can be mapped and linked to transformation rate. This application of Raman spectroscopy was used with retrieved zirconia femoral heads in total hip replacement [10,11]. In the dental field, it was possible to measure the compressive stress field induced at the surface after sandblasting [12].…”

Biomechanical Alignment of Main Wear-Pattern on MOM Total Hip Replacement

“…The anticipated 'normal' mode of everyday activities [20,21] created more or less circular wear patches on the head and inside the cup [22,23]. However, COC cases with 1 to 22 years follow-up also revealed evidence of a crescent-shaped type of stripe wear across femoral heads and around the rims of ceramic cups [22,[24][25][26][27].…”