Wear and deformation of metal-on-polyethylene hip bearings under edge loading conditions due to variations in component positioning

Despite the clinical success of hip joint replacement, the risk of revision, particularly in younger and more active patients, still remains a concern. To identify conditions of high wear, fatigue and potential failure modes, there is need to be able to replicate a range of in vivo conditions with pre-clinical testing methods in order to predict the range of clinical wear. In particular, edge loading of metal-on-polyethylene hip replacements has the potential to have impact on both surface wear and fatigue failure. The mode of edge loading explored in this study involves separation of the centres of the femoral head and acetabular cup during a portion of the gait cycle. Such edge loading can occur due to variations in translational and/or rotational positioning of the hip replacement. In this study, the influence of translational positioning along the medial-lateral axis (medial-lateral translational mismatch) combined with rotational positioning of the acetabular cup about the anterior-posterior axis (cup inclination angle) on the occurrence and severity of edge loading, and wear and plastic deformation, was investigated for size 36 mm metal-on-polyethylene total hip replacements on a ProSim EM13 electromechanical hip joint simulator. A two phase approach was used; a short term study where the mechanics of the hip bearing were assessed under a wide range of input conditions (45° and 65° cup inclination angle and 1, 2, 3, 4 mm medial-lateral translational mismatch); followed by wear simulation for a lower number of conditions.

Larger medial-lateral translational mismatch conditions led to increased levels of dynamic separation between the femoral head and acetabular cup with the largest dynamic separation (2.4 ± 0.2 mm, mean ± 95% confidence limits) measured under 4 mm translational mismatch with the 65° cup inclination angle conditions. The load at the rim at 0.5 mm of separation was also highest at this condition, as was the mean wear rate (23.0 ± 2.4 mm³ / million cycles).

Dynamic separation, load at the rim and wear was consistently greater with the steeper cup inclination angle of 65° compared to 45° for all translational mismatch conditions. Translational mismatch conditions of 3 mm and 4 mm resulted in dynamic separation displacements >0.5 mm. At a 45° cup inclination angle under standard concentric conditions (zero translational mismatch) minimal wear and plastic deformation occurred at the rim of the cup, however at a 65° cup inclination edge contact at the rim was identified.

Variations in rotational (cup inclination angle) and translational (medial-lateral) positioning influenced the magnitude of dynamic separation, severity of edge loading, and wear of metal – on - moderately cross-linked polyethylene hip replacements, demonstrating the importance of surgical component positioning.