Bioactive Coating on Newly Developed Composite Hip Prosthesis

Abstract

Conventional metal prostheses carry the major joint load and cause stress shielding and bone become osteoporotic due to lack of physiological stress flow in a common hip replacement. To develop suitable hip prosthesis having properties similar in terms of density and modulus of elasticity of bone, ceramic reinforced polymer composite material would be an ideal material as bone is also a composite material consisting of collagen fiber matrix and embedded hydroxyapatite mineral. With this idea in mind we developed a composite material using UHMWPE and alumina ceramic in various proportion whose properties are similar to that of bone and tried to integrate it with bone using hydroxyapatite and bio-glass separately leading to new osseous tissue generation for fixation when in intimate contact with bone in animal model. © International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering 2009.