Presently, up to a third of some types of artificial joints fail within ten years.
Engineers believe problems have arisen with some implants because of weaknesses in the way they were tested prior to being approved for use. Current testing fails to evaluate real-world wear and tear.
£4 million in EU funding
The BioTrib European Training Network project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 956004
5 Universities
The BioTrib teams comprises 5 Beneficiaries from the UK and, Sweden, and Switzerland together with 11 partners from across the globe, including organisations in Australia and China
15 Early Stage Researchers
15 ESR projects reflecting both the underpinning fundamental engineering science and the application through the incorporation of new materials, techniques and assessment methods
What we do:
This ETN is timely as it is a response to the highly significant economic and patient issues relating to early failure in metal-on-metal total hip and resurfacing replacements [1]. The media have defined this as a significant public health issue, for instance, the BBC reported Metal-on-Metal hip replacements ‘high failure rate’ [2], but substantial issues persist with very recent reports of inadequate devices e.g. The Implant Files and FDA guidance [3, 4, 5]. This is a truly European problem with, for instance, new devices manufactured in the UK being first implanted, unsuccessfully, in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands [6, 7]. The scientific and clinical communities are acutely aware of these detrimental issues and are partaking in a debate which focuses on alternative materials and designs for replacement systems. Furthermore these problems have brought growing concerns from regulatory authorities on how to effectively test new devices, pre-clinically, as the current spate of failures appear not to have been recognised with current standard tests [8, 9]. Learn more about the current state of joint implant research here.