A painful soft tissue mass secondary to impingement of a metal on polyethylene bearing total hip arthroplasty.

A 60-year-old woman underwent a metal on polyethylene total hip replacement. The patient experienced pain and sustained multiple dislocations over the following 2 years and was referred for consideration of revision surgery. At the time of revision surgery it was found that there was a significant amount of polyethylene wear likely to have arisen as a result of the neutral cup placement and subsequent anterior impingement. A large cystic mass was excised and on histology was found to contain tissue with a lymphocytic infiltrate with a large amount of intracellular birefringent debris, consistent with polyethylene. The appearance of such masses is well reported as pseudotumours in metal-on-metal hip replacements but as yet their aetiology is unknown. We believe that the formation of the mass in this case could represent a model by which these pseudotumours occur.