Estimation of the optimum loading of an antibiotic powder in an acrylic bone cement: Gentamicin sulfate in SmartSet HV

Background In some countries, commercially available antibiotic powder-loaded acrylic bone cement is routinely used in joint replacement, while, in others, “off-label” formulations are used in selected procedures (where the antibiotic powder is blended manually with the powder of a plain cement in the operating room/theater by either the surgeon or approved personnel). In the latter situation, an arbitrary rather than a rational approach is used for deciding on the amount of the antibiotic that is blended with the cement powder (herein referred to as “the antibiotic powder loading”).Methods and results The first objective of this study was to present two methods for estimating the optimum loading of gentamicin sulfate powder that may be blended manually with the powder of a commercially available acrylic bone cement, ABC (Wopt). The second objective was to define the challenges associated with each of these methods. The loading (W) was optimized with respect to two key properties of the cured cement that ...