Rust!
How do you go about finding materials to replace a hip joint?
How do you find materials that won’t degrade, fall apart or ‘rust’ in the salty human body?
And, if it does degrade (because all materials will to some extent) won’t produce particles that harm living humans?
Once you find the right material, how do make sure it’s made the same way every time; that the ingredients are consistent?
How do you shape and design those materials to work as a pain free functional joint?
What’s the best design?
Do you match human anatomy?
Do you tweak nature’s design?
Do you use a different design altogether?
How do you get the implant safely into the right place?
There's a lot of clockwork (and plumbing) around the hip joint!
Once it’s there, how do you fix it to the human body?
Fix it so that it doesn’t rattle lose after a few steps?
Or rattle loose over the coming days, weeks or the many years?
You might have heard me say that humans takes over a million steps a year. So how on Earth do you keep a hip replacement fixed to bone for 10, 20 or maybe 50 million steps?
And once the fixation is sorted, how do you make sure that the moving parts don’t wear out? Wear out and need replacing again within a few weeks or months?
