An in vitro simulation method for the tribological assessment of complete natural hip joints

Dawn Groves, John Fisher and Sophie Williams

PLOS ONE, 2017, vol. 12, issue 9, 1-15

Abstract: The use of hip joint simulators to evaluate the tribological performance of total hip replacements is widely reported in the literature, however, in vitro simulation studies investigating the tribology of the natural hip joint are limited with heterogeneous methodologies reported. An in vitro simulation system for the complete natural hip joint, enabling the acetabulum and femoral head to be positioned with different orientations whilst maintaining the correct joint centre of rotation, was successfully developed for this study. The efficacy of the simulation system was assessed by testing complete, matched natural porcine hip joints and porcine hip hemiarthroplasty joints in a pendulum friction simulator. The results showed evidence of biphasic lubrication, with a non-linear increase in friction being observed in both groups. Lower overall mean friction factor values in the complete natural joint group that increased at a lower rate over time, suggest that the exudation of fluid and transition to solid phase lubrication occurred more slowly in the complete natural hip joint compared to the hip hemiarthroplasty joint. It is envisaged that this methodology will be used to investigate morphological risk factors for developing hip osteoarthritis, as well as the effectiveness of early interventional treatments for degenerative hip disease.

Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184226 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 84226&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0184226

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184226

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone (plosone@plos.org).