All dual mobility cups are not the same

Although the natural history of dual mobility has been exclusively borne for 20 years by a single company (due to industrial ownership), the concept has undeniably been very widely popularised with nearly 40 cups on the French market which should be regarded as a weight bearing surface, both broadly and in their own right. However, within the same original idea, these implants are not all identical (design, material, fixation ect.).The aim of this work is to propose a classification of different dual mobility cups by distinguishing between thegeneral characteristics of a conventional cup and those particular to this type of implant.

By comparison with a standard metal-back cup, dual mobility is based on at least one additional interface corresponding to the mobility of the polyethylene insert in the concavity of the acetabular cup called the outersurface. Design, constitutive material, fixation of the cup and characteristics of the retentive insert are analysed through the published results.

The complications associated, in particular, the intraprosthetic dislocation and to a lesser extent fixation failures undoubtedly condemned the dissemination of the dual mobility concept, as witnessed by the fact that despite the precedence of this 40-year old concept, the overriding majority of publications (more than 95%) have only appeared in the last ten years.

The latest generation of dual mobility cups combines: 1) a cast chrome-cobalt alloy cup covered with a bilayer coating of porous titanium and hydroxyapatite for long-term press-fit fixation to 2) an insert designed to eliminate all of the risks of intraprosthetic dislocation, whilst keeping all of the elasticity properties of the polyethylene, which has demonstrated its medium and long term effectiveness on preventing instability by overcoming other complications.