Book excerpt: The purpose of this book was to offer an overview of recent insights into the current state of arthroplasty. The tremendous long term success of Sir Charnley's total hip arthroplasty has encouraged many researchers to treat pain, improve function and create solutions for higher quality of life. Indeed and as described in a special chapter of this book, arthroplasty is an emerging field in the joints of upper extremity and spine. However, there are inborn complications in any foreign design brought to the human body. First, in the chapter on infections we endeavor to provide a comprehensive, up-to-date analysis and description of the management of this difficult problem. Second, the immune system is faced with a strange material coming in huge amounts of micro-particles from the tribology code. Therefore, great attention to the problem of aseptic loosening has been addressed in special chapters on loosening and on materials currently available for arthroplasty.