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AssigneeThe Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania
InventorsPaul Ducheyne, L. D. Timmie Topoleski, John M. Cuckler
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The distribution of short, fine, reinforcing fibers homogeneously throughout surgical bone cement is accomplished by adding the fibers in the form of bundles of several hundred fibers with the fibers bonded to each other with an adhesive binder that is soluble in the liquid monomer component of the bone cement. The fiber bundles are either premixed with the powdery polymer bead component of the bone cement followed by addition of the liquid monomer or the polymer and liquid are premixed into a viscous liquid and the fiber bundles are gradually added with stirring to the viscous liquid. In either case, as the adhesive binder dissolves in the liquid monomer the individual fibers are freed and continued stirring mixes the fibers homogeneously throughout the cement mass.
A fiber reinforcing material for incorporation into a two component bone cement including particulate polymer component and a polymerizable liquid monomer component and which reinforcing material can be readily incorporated by manual mixing into the bone cement by a surgeon during a surgical operation, said reinforcing material comprising a bundle of reinforcing fibers held together by an adhesive material which is soluble in the liquid monomer component of the two component bone cement, the fibers of said bundle having a diameter in the range of from about 5 to about 100 microns and a length in the range of from about 0.5 to about 10 millimeters, and the length-to-diameter ratio of said bundle being in the range of from about 10:1 to about 1:10.
A bone cement treatment kit for bone repair or other treatment of a bone defect, said kit comprising (1) finely divided acrylic polymer and (2) polymerizable liquid acrylic monomer for preparation of bone cement useful in bone repair or other bone treatment, and (3) a reinforcing material comprising bundles of reinforcing fibers wherein the fibers of said bundles are bonded to each other by an adhesive material which is soluble in said liquid monomer (2), whereby when said components (1), (2) and (3) are combined the adhesive material dissolves in said liquid monomer and allows said fibers to be homogeneously distributed throughout said bone cement by manual mixing.
A method for forming a fiber reinforced bone cement for bone repair or other treatment of bone, said method comprising first mixing a powdery polymer component of said bone cement and a plurality of reinforcing fiber bundles, each of said bundles comprising a plurality of short reinforcing fibers bonded together by an adhesive material, and thereafter mixing said fiber-polymer mixture with a polymerizable liquid monomer component of said bone cement which can dissolve said adhesive material and thereby promote uniform and homogeneous distribution of said reinforcing fibers throughout said bone cement.
A method of forming a fiber reinforced bone cement for bone repair or other treatment of bone, said method comprising premixing a powdery or granular polymer component of said bone cement and a liquid polymerizable monomer component of said bone cement which is a solvent for said polymer component to form a viscous liquid mixture, gradually adding to said liquid mixture a plurality of bundles of short reinforcing fibers, the fibers of said bundles being glued together by an adhesive which is soluble in said liquid monomer and stirring the resulting mixture to distribute the fiber bundles throughout the mixture, while allowing the adhesive component to dissolve in said liquid monomer whereby the individual fibers of said fiber bundles are released into and randomly distributed throughout the bone cement.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.