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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Biotribology of artificial hip joints
Francesca Di Puccio, Lorenza Mattei, Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy
Author contributions: The two authors co-worked in the preparation of the paper, revision of the literature and collecting the data; Mattei L also performed numerical simulations.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Lorenza Mattei, MD, PhD, Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, University of Pisa, Largo Lazzarino, 56126 Pisa, Italy. l.mattei@ing.unipi.it
Telephone: +39-050-2218019 Fax: +39-050-2218069
Received: December 28, 2013
Peer-review started: December 29, 2013
First decision: February 13, 2014
Revised: March 25, 2014
Accepted: May 14, 2014
Article in press: May 14, 2014
Published online: January 18, 2015
Peer-review started: December 29, 2013
First decision: February 13, 2014
Revised: March 25, 2014
Accepted: May 14, 2014
Article in press: May 14, 2014
Published online: January 18, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: In this paper, the biotribology of hip implants is described at different levels, from the more general definitions of friction, lubrication and wear and from some basic equations, to clinical data of different implants. The topic is presented both qualitatively and quantitatively, which we believe is an original approach for a review of this kind. Some simple mathematical tools are provided, which can also be useful for non-specialists to better understand the matter and to deal with simple tribological problems. Finally, the trends of artificial hip joints over the last ten years are discussed on the basis of tribological concepts.