I've said this before and I'll say it again - I think expecting patients to research and choose their own prosthesis is very worrying! Where do you go to for this information? Mostly to the websites of the manufacturers! Answer me this - would you expect any manufacturer to be impartial about their own product? No!
Such detail of implants is a highly technical thing and akin (IMO) to asking someone to choose the most suitable antibiotic for an infection.
Also bear in mind that prostheses currently in use are all tried and tested and have a well proven track record. It is my belief that the only person properly equipped to make the choice is the OS himself as he actually understands all the nuances of which you speak.
Further, implants currently on sale are perfectly reliable. Failures such as you are describing are actually very rare. The most common failures have nothing to do with the prosthesis at all but are the result of poor operative technique. These would include 1. loosening, 2. pain and/or breakage resulting from incorrect positioning and 3. infection in that order.
All that having been said, somewhere along the line, someone in the US deemed it necessary for patients to be made to make this choice so you're stuck with it.
To get to basics - ceramic is a pretty durable material. Don't forget it was originally created for the tiles that cover the noses of the shuttles for re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. Plastic is pretty good too even though it does have a potential to wear. Must say though, in all my years I saw precious few patients come in to have a revision solely to replace a worn cup. Given that, the problem of debris from the wear seems somewhat academic. If you have, say, a 0.01% chance of wear then 0.01% of those will have a problem with infection from the debris. Hardly worth the effort of typing it out, is it.
At the end of the day, I can only tell you this. Everything has a potential for side-effects or problems. If you take an antihistamine, an antibiotic or any other med you could get side effects. If you have your bunion surgically corrected there's pretty much the same percentage of poor outcome, infection or failure as there is in a hip replacement.
My advice is to have your doctor choose you the best OS you can afford and/or get to and trust him because that's what I would do and have done. Your best investment is a man who knows what he's doing and has oodles of experience doing it. All the rest is just words on paper.
United Kingdom
