20 years of porous tantalum in primary and revision hip arthroplasty—time for a critical appraisal

After almost 2 decades of clinical use, porous tantalum has become an important component in the orthopedic surgeon’s toolbox, and its most common use today is as acetabular cups, cages, or augments in revision arthroplasty. For many revision surgeons, porous tantalum has significantly changed their practice when addressing more complex acetabular bone loss. However, now porous tantalum is also increasingly used as a coating for cups used in primary total hip arthroplasty (THA). It is time for a critical appraisal of porous tantalum in hip arthroplasty, and this issue of Acta Orthopaedica contains an article that investigates the use of porous tantalum cups in primary THA (Laaksonen et al. 2018).