Duration Stabilized UHMWPE

Duration Stabilized UHMWPE (12) Howmedica Osteonics Corp. 

Duration Stabilized UHMWPE was the first annealed crosshnked material. Crossfire annealed highly crosshnked UHMWPE (Stryker Orthopaedics, Mahwah, New Jersey, USA) was introduced for total hip components in 1998. In 2005, X3 (Stryker Orthopaedics, Mahwah, New Jersey, USA), a sequentially irradiated and annealed UHMWPE, was introduced. This material was developed based on experience with its predecessors with the intention of using the current data to produce a highly crosshnked UHMWPE available for both the hip and the knee. 

D.C. Sun, PhD, introduced many of the techniques used today for UHMWPE evaluation. In 1992, he proposed the stabilization process that led to the development of Duration polyethylene. His work had confirmed that gamma sterilization of UHMWPE resulted in free radicals (and crosshnk-ing), and he believed that residual free radicals could be undesirable because they could react with oxygen and might lead to compromised material properties [9, 10]. 

---