ABSTRACT
The worldwide prestige enjoyed by cemented total joint replacements is well deserved. To our professional predecessors recalling the pitiful fate of chair-ridden patients with end stage joint disease in the 1950s, the phenomenal results attained by replacement of a destroyed articulation by an artificial joint manufactured of alloplastic components spells a success story. Interpositional arthroplasty, placing one substance or another between resected joint surfaces, goes back a long time, but it was not until Smith-Petersen promoted the cast cobalt-chrome-molybdenum alloy to serve as artificial joint’s constituents that a breakthrough was first recorded in the late 1940s [1]. All in all, the clinical outcome was however still poor. In an attempt at achieving durable pain-free joint motion, Moore and MacIntosh innovated the hemiarthroplasties [2,3]. Notwithstanding striking functional improvements in patients’ subjective and objective status, a metallic endoprosthesis replacing a femoral head or a tibial plateau did not bring about the anticipated long-term relief because the diseased acetabulum or femoral condyles were left in situ, thus continuing to be a source of pain and impaired performance. Sir John Charnley ushered in a genuine headway with his innovation of an artificial hip joint incorporating a stemmed, stainless steel femoral head articulating with a polymeric acetabular socket, polymethylmethacrylate fixating the components to the bone [4]. The kindred total knee arthroplasty, designed by Gunston, comprised a cemented metallic femoral component and a cemented polymeric tibial insert [5].
