Forget minimally invasive surgery, robotics, and biologicals; one of the best-attended sessions at this year's American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) meeting focused not on future technologies, but on the here and now: implant materials and surface coatings. And the materials program this year, played to an overflowing room, took on an added significance in light of the recent approval for sale in the US of a ceramic-on-ceramic hip implant.
Though materials and surface coatings are, in some ways, the most basic of orthopedic implant technologies, they represent "one of...