Previous studies have shown that third body damage to the femoral head in metal-on-polyethylene hip replacement bearings can lead to accelerated wear of the polyethylene liners. The resulting damage patterns observed on retrieved metal heads are typically scratches and scrapes. The damage created The aim of this study was to determine the wear rates of polyethylene liners articulating against retrievals and artificially damaged metal heads for the purpose of validating a computational wear prediction model; and to develop and validate an Twenty nine, 32mm diameter, metal-on-moderately cross-linked polyethylene bearings (MarathonTM) inserted into Ti-6Al-4V shells (Pinnacle®) were tested in this study. All products were manufactured by DePuy Synthes, Warsaw, Indiana, USA. Following a retrieval study seven different damage patterns were defined, and these were applied to the femoral heads using a four-degree-of-freedom CNC milling machine (Figure 1). The ProSim 10-station pneumatic hip joint simulator (Simulation Solutions, UK) was used for experimental wear simulation using standard gait cycles and testing each experimental group for 3 million cycles. The acetabular cups were inclined at 35° on the simulator (equivalent to 45° Introduction
Materials and Methods
