Bone cement
adhesives used to fix prosthetic devices to bones and to cement bone to bone in difficult fractures
Bone cement is a synthetic biomaterial used in orthopaedic surgery to anchor implants, fill bone defects, and stabilise fractures by creating a mechanical bond between prosthetic devices and living bone. It has been used for artificial joints (hip joints, knee joints, shoulder and elbow joints) for more than half a century. Artificial joints (referred to as prostheses) are anchored with bone cement. The bone cement fills the free space between the prosthesis and the bone and plays the important role of an elastic zone. This is necessary because the human hip is acted on by approximately 10–12 times the body weight and therefore the bone cement must absorb the forces acting on the hips to ensure that the artificial implant remains in place over the long term.
Bone cement chemically is nothing more than Plexiglas (i.e. polymethyl methacrylate or PMMA). PMMA was used clinically for the first time in the 1940s in plastic surgery to close gaps in the skull. Comprehensive clinical tests of the compatibility of bone cements with the body were conducted before their use in surgery. The excellent tissue compatibility of PMMA allowed bone cements to be used for anchorage of head prostheses in the 1950s.
The public source identifies “Bone cement” as adhesives used to fix prosthetic devices to bones and to cement bone to bone in difficult fractures. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bone, cement and adhesives.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bone cement” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.