7-Be Implantation in Plastics for Prosthesis Wear Studies

The current generation of highly cross linked ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylenes (PE) for hip and knee joint replacement have achieved such low in vitro wear rates that efforts have been underway to develop more sensitive methods to measure polyethylene wear. The most widely used technique, the gravimetric method, suffers from the notable disadvantage that mass gain by fluid absorption can considerably exceed mass loss by wear, making the wear measurement inaccurate, sometimes even leading to negative ``wear'' values. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the use of a radioactive tracer, beryllium-7 (7-Be), to circumvent the problem of fluid absorption and thereby achieve a much more sensitive and accurate wear measurement. This proof of principle study demonstrated the general feasibility of 7-Be implantation (performed at the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility of Oak Ridge National Laboratory) for PE wear analysis.