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2014 EFORT Congress: Tribology Day
During the last 5 years the sessions of the tribology day have become a well recognized highlight of our annual EFORT congresses. Starting in Madrid 2010, we will now be able to present the programme for the Fifth Tribology Day.
The overall theme of this London Congress is patient safety. Therefore our three symposia are dedicated to this topic given the best knowledge of articulation materials in total hip and knee arthroplasty.
Our first symposium will cover the improvements in polyethylene and ceramics. All the speakers were asked to give us an answer if these materials really do fulfill our expectations. The speakers of this session will talk about crosslinked polyethylene and the new modification with vitamin E-enhanced products. On the other hand we have further improvements in ceramic articulations to overcome the rare complications of fracture and squeaking. Finally there is a paper analyzing if ceramic-on-crosslinked polyethylene or metal-on-crosslinked polyethylene will be the superior articulation of choice.
Within the second symposium entitled “Hot Topics in Total Hip Arthroplasty” we deal with problems that have come up during the last years and have been of great concern for surgeons and patients. This is on the one hand the connection between stem and head where there are increasing reports of friction problems at the taper. But several concerns came up on the metal-on-metal articulations and here we will try to give sufficient recommendations to handle this problem.
A hot topic during the last years has been the use of large femoral heads. Again here we hope to be able to give an answer on the most favorable head size to be used in total hip arthroplasty. Nowadays the increasing number of national joint registers give us better information about the results we can achieve with different products and implants. But how should we read and interpret this register data, especially on the view of tribologic issues? This will also be one of the hot topics of this symposium. Nevertheless there is the need to improve our devices and one of these options is presented in this symposium. Researchers from the U.S. will present their proposal for a next generation of soft tissue friendly femoral heads.
During the last tribology day in Istanbul we started with topics on total knee arthroplasty and these we will continue in London. The influence of kinematics on wear are focused on two interesting lectures. Although the metal ion release was just a topic of metal articulations in hip surgery, this problem could also become more relevant in patients with total knee arthroplasties — again a very important topic under the view of patient safety. Another question in debate is the implant for allergic patients. Do we need special femoral component coatings or do we need other materials like ceramic also for knee endoprostheses? Again we will try to cover these topics and find expectations and solutions for these problems.
Nevertheless we asked for free paper lectures to create a comprehensive session on different topics of tribology in hip and knee arthroplasty.
The tribology day will be held on Wednesday, 4 June 2014 and I am looking forward to welcoming many interested surgeons to share with us the problems of technology in total hip and knee arthroplasty.
- Author:
- Univ.Prof.Dr. Karl Knahr