In vitro wear assessments of fixed and mobile UHMWPE total knee replacement

This work discusses the wear behaviour of two different ultra-high-molecular-weight-polyethylene tibial component designs. Mobile and fixed bearings were tested on a knee wear simulator for 5 million cycles using bovine calf serum as lubricant. We correlated the wear results with the chemical characterisation of the investigated materials: Fourier Transformed Infra Red Spectroscopy analyses, Differential Scanning Calorimetry and cross-link density measurements were used to assess the chemical features of this polyethylene. Mobile and fixed polyethylene inserts showed a different wear behaviour: the mobile designs components showed lower weight losses than the fixed components (109 ± 6 mg and 163 ± 80 mg, respectively). Significant statistical differences were observed in wear rate (P = 0.035, Kolmogorov–Smirnov Test for two samples). From a molecular point of view, typical radiation-induced oxidation profiles were observed in all the tested polyethylene samples, but the overall degradation was more significant in the fixed bearing inserts and this is likely to play a role on the wear performances.