Comparative Biomechanical Study of Crosslinked Polyethylene Wear with 36-mm Ceramic Femoral Heads and with 32-mm Metal Femoral Heads.

Objective  This study aims to compare the in vitro wear rate of crosslinked, high molecular weight polyethylene coupled to 36-mm diameter ceramic heads and 32-mm diameter metal heads. Methods  Ceramic-on-polyethylene (36 mm) and metal-on-polyethylene (32 mm) tribological pairs were submitted to biomechanical tests in a simulator to determine the wear rate after 15 × 10 6 cycles. Results  A statistically significant difference ( p  = 0.0005) was detected when comparing the wear rate of assemblies with metallic heads (average wear: 14.12 mg/MC) and ceramic heads (average wear: 7.46 mg/MC). Conclusion  The present study demonstrated the lower wear rate in prosthetic assemblies using 36-mm crosslinked ceramic-on-polyethylene tribological pairs compared to 32-mm crosslinked metal-on-polyethylene assemblies. This finding demonstrates the effectiveness of ceramic-on-polyethylene tribological pairs, even with large diameter heads.