Hi
@Sabine, you can ask your surgeon why they want to go CoP.
My surgeon also used to do some ceramic on ceramic devices, but ... from talking to him and from looking at a number of studies out there, it seems that the survivorship rates for CoP are really impressing surgeons ... So now he favors CoP (which is what I got). They've got over ten years of using cross-linked polyethylene and the wear rates have proven minimal. I had two top surgeons (from different practices in different cities) who said almost the same words: the wear rates of CoP aren't zero ... but they're close to zero ... going past ten years now.
Yes, from what I can cell the CoC wear rates are lower still but ... there's more that goes into successful hip replacement than wear rates ... The studies I saw never found better survivorship rates for CoC ... There are apparently complications with CoC if you don't place the device just right. In fact, almost every study I looked at (not saying I'm a researcher--just an obsessive who used researching to deal with his anxiety) CoP had higher survivorship rates at 5 years, 10 years, etc.
Anyway, you're not talking low (CoC) vs. high (CoP) wear rates. You're talking extremely low vs. extremely low. Surgeons have been burnt by theoretical advantages many times ... so when something like CoP actually proves incredibly reliable in the real world ... with extremely high survivorship rates, surgeons tend to feel comfortable with that.
In fact, my surgeon just gave a presentation at a national joint replacement conference in which he reported that the vast majority of surgeons connected to research centers and teaching hospitals ... now use ceramic on cross-linked polyethylene.
Just my two cents: if I were go to CoC (which I didn't), I would have selected a surgeon who specializes in CoC, like a surgeon who uses CoC for 90 percent of their operations.
Canada
