Wear characteristic and biocompatibility of some polymer composite acetabular cups

UHMWPE and HDPE have been successfully used as acetabular cup materials over several decades but recently there is concern over their biosafety. Composites of these and other polymers offer comparable mechanical and tribological properties with improved biocompatibility. Very little attention, however, has been paid towards the development of hip and knee prostheses using such polymer composites. In the present work new polymer composites of HDPE reinforced with different percentages of kevlar and carbon fibre have been developed and acetabular cups prepared by compression moulding. A walk simulator, developed in-house was used for testing the tribological performance of these cups. The results are encouraging and some of the new composites may be considered to be potential future materials for acetabular cups. Biocompatibility tests with these materials give haemolysis counts well within the acceptable range and further more our results indicate a significant improvement in the biocompatibility of the polymer composites over their parent polymers. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.