Influence of the radiopacifier in an acrylic bone cement on its mechanical, thermal, and physical properties: Barium sulfate-containing cement versus iodine-containing cement

In all acrylic bone cement formulations in clinical use today, radiopacity is provided by micron‐sized particles (typical mean diameter of between about 1 and 2 μm) of either BaSO4 or ZrO2. However, a number of research reports have highlighted the fact that these particles have deleterious effects on various properties of the cured cement. Thus, there is interest in alternative radiopacifiers. The present study focuses on one such alternative. Specifically, a cement that contains covalently bound iodine in the powder (herein designated the I‐cement) was compared with a commercially available cement of comparable composition (C‐ment®3), in which radiopacity is provided by BaSO4 particles (this cement is herein designated the B‐cement), on the basis of the strength (σb), modulus (Eb), and work‐to‐fracture (Ub), under four‐point bending, plane‐strain fracture toughness (KIC), Weibull mean fatigue life, NWM (fatigue conditions: ±15 MPa; 2 Hz), activation energy (Q), and frequency factor (ln Z) for the cement polymerization process (both determined by using differential scanning calorimetry at heating rates of 5, 10, 15, and 20 K min−1), and the diffusion coefficient for the absorption of phosphate‐buffered saline at 37°C (D). For the B‐cement, the values of σb, Eb, Ub, KIC, NWM, Q, ln Z, and D were 53 ± 3 MPa, 3000 ± 120 MPa, 108 ± 15 kJ m−3, 1.67 ± 0.02 MPa✓m, 7197 cycles, 243 ± 17 kJ mol−1, 87 ± 6, and (3.15 ± 0.94) × 10−12 m2 s−1, respectively. For the I‐cement, the corresponding values were 58 ± 5 MPa, 2790 ± 140 MPa, 118 ± 45 kJ m−3, 1.73 ± 0.11 MPa✓m, 5520 cycles, 267 ± 19 kJ mol−1, 95 ± 9, and (3.83 ± 0.25) × 10−12 m2 s−1. For each of the properties of the fully cured cement, except for the rate constant of the polymerization reaction, at 37°C (k′), as estimated from the Q and ln Z results, there is no statistically significant difference between the two cements. k′ for the I‐cement was about a third that for the B‐cement, suggesting that the former cement has a higher thermal stability. The influence of various characteristics of the starting powder (mean particle size, particle size distribution, and morphology) on the properties of the cured cements appears to be complex. When all the present results are considered, there is a clear indication that the I‐cement is a viable candidate cement for use in cemented arthroplasties in place of the B‐cement. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater 73B: 77–87, 2005