Creep characteristics of hand- and vacuum-mixed acrylic bone cement at elevated stress levels

Compressive creep testing of cylindrical specimens machined from two commercial self-polymerizing acrylic bone cements demonstrated measurable creep strains with higher creep strains for the hand-mixed cement specimens compared to vacuum-mixed cement ones. The average creep strains of hand-mixed cement, after 6 h of constant load, ranged from 0.11% at 10.5 MPa to 14.0% at 50 MPa of applied stress. Vacuum mixing reduced the average creep strain to 6.7% after 6 h of applied stress at 50 MPa. There were no significant differences in the creep response between the two types of acrylic cements. The difference in creep resistance of the two cements was reduced after vacuum mixing (P = .013), which also significantly reduced the cement's internal porosity.