Catastrophic wear of tibial polyethylene inserts

A number of factors play an important role in the wear-resistance of tibial polyethylene inserts. Among these are manufacturing processes that adversely affect the wear-resistance of polyethylene (such as heat treatments to the articular surface or gamma irradiation used for sterilization), tibio-femoral articular geometry, polyethylene thickness, knee alignment, femoral-component-bearing surface material, modularity of the tibial inserts and tibial trays, and quality of the polyethylene itself. The authors report an unusually high rate of failure by wear of tibial polyethylene inserts from a series of 176 Porous Coated Anatomic (PCA) knees in which there were eight revisions (4.5% of the series) performed for tibial polyethylene wear at an average of 60 months. Nine additional knees (5.1%) had thinning of greater than 30% of the initial polyethylene thickness. Four of the unsuccessful knees revealed areas of osteolysis filled with membranes containing large amounts of particulate polyethylene. In addition to the 176 knees from a series from a Los Angeles university, the cases of five other knees in four patients who came for treatment from outside hospitals with full-thickness wear of the tibial polyethylene are discussed. One of these five knees was a cementless PCA knee that developed massive osteolysis in response to the particulate polyethylene debris.