Articles techniques et présentations

Modular orthopaedic devices are a feature of total joint replacements today. These modular orthopaedic devices allowing surgeons to choose from a variety of available implant sizes, designs & material options for the procedure required and the patient specific requirements. However, even though this allows for greater scope of implant construction, if the various components of the modular design are not ideally matched, this can lead to fretting fatigue & corrosion, due to the resulting micro-motion & contact stresses found at the mismatched surfaces during cyclical loading. This results in interface wear, which can lead to implant rejection due to wear debris induced osteolysis. In this study we assess implant design changes between a modular femoral stem and femur head implant and quantify the resulting fretting fatigue & wear over a gait cycle.