Summary
The risk of fatigue fractures of the femoral stem in a cemented total hip arthroplasty can be minimized by either incrinsing the stem cross section and/or using very high strength alloys. The aim of this experiment was to evaluate important mechanical characteristics of five selected stems, differing in design and material (stainless steel, chrome cobalt alloy, nickel based alloy, titanium alloy and carbon-carbon composite). Strain gages were glued on the lateral and medial aspects of each stem. After cementing into cadaver femurs, each stem was loaded up to 3000 N in a tension-compression machine and the stress patterns were recorded. Regardless of stem type, the typical stress distribution was a bell shaped curve. For cobalt chrome alloy and stainless steel stems, the larger stems resulted in lower stresses and higher factors of safety. The factor of safety was increased even further when using super alloys such as MP35N and Ti6A14V. Low modulus materials i.e. carbon-carbon composites exhibited lower stresses resulting in a safety factor close to MP35N. In addition, low modulus materials allowed the use of larger and stronger stems without the extra penalty of a high rigidity which was enforced by either the steel or cobalt based alloys.
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© 1989 Biomaterials Research Group
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Meunier, A., Christel, P., Sedel, L. (1989). Role of Design and Material on Stress Distributions of Cemented Hip Prostheses. In: Williams, K.R., Lesser, T.H.J. (eds) Proceedings of the First International Conference on Interfaces in Medicine and Mechanics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-7477-0_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-7477-0_22
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