Surface analysis of prosthetic wear debris

Abstract

Total 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.

An introduction of various spectroscopic methods to identify in vivo metal wear in total knee arthroplasty

“…2 and 3). This backside wear data supports our previous XPS work using different samples with identical component wear configurations 27…”

Differences in the surface composition of seemingly similar F75 cobalt–chromium micron-sized particulates can affect synovial fibroblast viability

“…Although the biomedical community has utilized XPS to investigate biomaterial biocompatibility and thrombogenicity issues and to identify the elemental composition of material found in synovial joint fluid [2,18,19], this study is, to our knowledge, the first to apply XPS in studies using clinically relevant metal powders common to the biomaterials used in joint replacements and for cellular response studies.…”

Investigation of Bone Density Evolution Before and After Total Knee Arthroplasty Using a Thermodynamic-Based Framework

“…The basic premise is that joint replacements fail structurally because stresses have exceeded the strength of components, interfaces, or articulating surfaces. Foreign materials employed into the body not only must be biocompatible in a hostile environment, but must tolerate significant biological and mechanical stresses for many years [76][77][78]. Failure may occur within the prosthetic themselves [79][80][81], at the implantbone interfaces [82][83][84], or in the bone [9,11,12,85,86].…”