Inside failing joints: How wear and corrosion reshape hip and knee implants over time

Orthopedic implants are designed to restore movement and relieve pain, offering patients a second or even third chance at mobility.

A hip or knee replacement is often framed as a durable fix, engineered to last for years, sometimes decades, inside the human body.

And modern hip and knee implants exceed expectations, providing long service time and significantly improved quality of life for the vast majority of patients.

But durability inside biology, especially the human body, is never static once a foreign material is introduced.

It responds continuously, at every scale. ...