The surface topography of retrieved femoral heads

Abstract

Excessive wear of UHMWPE sockets is considered detrimental to the long-term performance of total hip replacement procedures. Although many factors contribute to the wear process, laboratory experiments have indicated that one of the most important factors affecting the wear rate is surface topography and in particular, the arithmetic mean surface roughness, R a, of the hard counterface. Surface roughness values were therefore obtained from the heads of 37 explanted and five new Charnley prostheses. The surface topography was measured using a Rodenstock RM 600 non-contacting profilometer. Five parameters were used to give a quantitative characterization of the surface texture; arithmetic mean surface roughness, R a, root mean square (RMS) surface roughness, R q, peak to valley height, R t, average single peak to valley height from five adjoining sample lengths, R z, and the skewness of the height distribution, Sk. Further, qualitative investigations were undertaken using a Joel-JSM-IC848 scanning electron microscope (SEM). The median values of R a, R q, R t and R z for explanted heads showed statistically significant increases when compared with values from new prostheses. No significant difference was found between any of these parameters measured in the anterior-posterior and the medial-lateral directions. This result may have important implications for the design of joint simulators. No correlation was found between any of the parameters and implant period.