The lexicon of polyethylene wear in artificial joints.

The analysis of wear on polyethylene components that have been retrieved after use in patients has provided invaluable understanding of how wear occurs in vivo, and how it may be minimized through improved materials and implant design. The great number of such studies that have been published over the past three decades has lead to an extensive vocabulary to describe the tribology of prosthetic joints. However, these also have led to some confusion, due to the occasional misuse of terms from classical tribology, along with the use of multiple terms to describe the same wear phenomenon, and vice versa.