Recent developments at Orthoplastics have allowed for the addition of Vitamin-E into UHMWPE plastics. The benefit of adding Vitamin-E to UHMWPE is the increase in lifespan of the medical implant, providing an obvious long term benefit to the patient.
It has been scientifically proven that Vitamin E is an effective oxygen scavenger, and as a result of this, it leads to a reduction in oxidation after irradiation has taken place.
Vitamin E is the collective term which is given to the group of tocopherols. From within this group, alphatocopherol within Vitamin E acts as a free radical scavenger, which reduces long term in-vivo oxidation. Simply put, alphatocopherol shows the best properties as an antioxidant and therefore, provides additional benefits to the implantable device.
When adding Vitamin E to the UHMWPE, Orthoplastics have identified that it is absolutely vital to ensure that the Vitamin E is distributed evenly, to guarantee part-to-part product consistency.
Orthoplastics’ Vitamin E material is produced in accordance with ASTM F2965, a quality control guideline which has been adopted to consistently guarantee quality levels within every manufactured product. All mechanical properties remain unchanged throughout the process of adding Vitamin E to the implant and the exceptional GUR UHMWPE premium grade standards are still achieved.
A very uniform Vitamin E distribution is achieved within all of the UHMWPE plastics which are manufactured at Orthoplastics, and the typically high standards of product cleanliness and appearance are maintained.