Wear in polyethylene liners appears to be exacerbated by 3rd-body abrasion effects with the CoCr ball combinations used for total hip replacements. This has implications for various wear modes encountered in patients. Yet clinical and laboratory studies have offered weak and sometimes contradictory wear relationships with respect to crosslinking, ball diameter and roughness, and 3rd-body wear effects. Our hip simulator model investigated the effect of severe wear challenges by 3rd-body cement particles, using large diameter CoCr and alumina balls, with highly-crosslinked polyethylene liners (HXPE) irradiated to 75kGy compared to contemporary controls (CXPE 35kGy).

The polyethylene liners were gamma-irradiated to 35/75kGy under N2 (CXPE/HXPE). We used 32 and 44mm CoCr balls (ENCORE, Austin, TX) and 44mm alumina-ceramic (Biolox-forte, CeramTecAG) as ‘scratch-resistant’ standard of comparison. We compared 5 bearings pairs with different roughness characteristics using both new and pre-worn polyethylene liners. A 12-station orbital hip simulator with a physiological load profile (0.2kN–3kN load, frequency 1Hz) with cups mounted in “Inverted- position”. Diluted bovine serum (Hyclone Inc., Logan, UT) was used as lubricant (20mg/ml protein, 400ml volume). In phase I, all cups were run in standard (‘clean’) lubricant for 1.5 million cycles (1.5Mc). In phase II, the liners were run in a PMMA slurry of serum (5mg/ml) for 2Mc. In phase III, implants were run ‘clean’ for 1.5Mc. Wear-rate was measured each 0.25Mc event, and surface roughness measured by SEM (XL-30FEG) and white light interferometry (Newview600, Zygo) every 0.5Mc.

In phase I, Wear withnew CXPE and HXPE liners averaged 182mm3/Mc and 30mm3/Mc. Thus the HXPE liners averaged a 6.0-fold wear reduction compared to controls. Compared to new liners, the pre-worn CXPE and HXPE liners showed 10% and 25%, greater wear respectively. Here it was noted that CoCr balls maintained similar roughness (Sa:8–12nm). And alumina balls showed small, gradual increase (Sa: 2 to 2.5nm). The HXPE maintained a superior finish to CXPE controls. Roughness revealed a gradual decrease with time, pre-worn CXPE from 0.28 to 0.15um and pre-worn HXPE from 0.18 to 0.04um (Sa). In contrast, new HXPE showed a dramatic smoothing (0.8 to 0.1um) 92.8% decreased in first 0.5Mc. These effects have not been previously quantified. In phase II with abrasive mode, the liner wear-rates increased dramatically by 6 and 80-fold for CXPE and HXPE, respectively. These data confirmed that HXPE was sensitive to ‘severe’ wear against CoCr and alumina balls. In phase III, the polyethylene roughness dropped by > 90% and wear decreased to phase-I values. The wear-ratio was now 2:1 for CXPE:HXPE as predicted by the ‘diameter’ and ‘crosslinking’ algorithms.

It was clear that surface roughness was not a confounding factorfor either the CoCr or alumina balls. It was the polyethylene surface roughness that appeared to influence wear rates. Our analysis showed that there was a transient due to patches of abrasive cement transferring onto CoCr ball surfaces. Overall the actual roughness of the CoCr balls did not change and was therefore not a factor in increased polyethylene wear.