The John Charnley Award: an accurate and sensitive method to separate, display, and characterize wear debris: part 1: polyethylene particles.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Numerous studies indicate highly crosslinked polyethylenes reduce the wear debris volume generated by hip arthroplasty acetabular liners. This, in turns, requires new methods to isolate and characterize them.

Questions/purposes

We describe a method for extracting polyethylene wear particles from bovine serum typically used in wear tests and for characterizing their size, distribution, and morphology.

Methods

Serum proteins were completely digested using an optimized enzymatic digestion method that prevented the loss of the smallest particles and minimized their clumping. Density-gradient ultracentrifugation was designed to remove contaminants and recover the particles without filtration, depositing them directly onto a silicon wafer. This provided uniform d

SUBMITTER: Billi F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3254734 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature