Surface analysis of prosthetic wear debris

Abstract

AbstractTotal knee arthroplasty introduces foreign materials into the body that are intended to withstand significant biological and mechanical stresses while maintaining biocompatibility. Unfortunately many arthroplasty patients experience inflammation and pain, presumably due to wear debris that dislodges from the artificial joint over time. The failure mechanisms of prosthetic devices and the chemical make‐up of the associated wear debris are presently unclear. In this study, we use x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman microscopy to identify the chemical composition of the wear debris. Knee synovial fluid was aspirated from seven different prosthetics patients and centrifuged, resulting in small deposits of wear debris. Our analysis identifies oxidized titanium in five of the seven sets of samples, indicating femoral component wear and potentially back‐side wear of the tibial base plates of the prosthetics. Furthermore, samples with large percentages of titanium also contain sodium, whereas the others contain chlorine. This may indicate differences in the chemical composition of synovial fluid under different inflammatory conditions. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.