Bioresorbable Plates and Screws for Clinical Applications: A Review

Abstract

Bioresorbable implants are being widely used for fracture fixation in orthopaedic surgery and the market is expanding rapidly worldwide. Bioresorbable materials slowly dissolve in the human body, such that a second operation to remove the synthetic material is not needed. Bioresorbable implants have expanded the armamentarium of the surgeon, especially in the field of sports medicine. Interference screws, plates, pins, suture anchors, meniscal repair implants, and simple fracture fixation implants are the most commonly used resorbable implants for anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, shoulder surgery, meniscal repair, and fracture care. However, many clinicians continue to rely on metal fixation, mainly due to the high mechanical strength and to the complications reported with some of the available resorbable implant materials. The goal of the present paper is to present an overview on the available resorbable materials and their applications with a particular focus on new developments and trends in the field.

Absorbable implants versus metal implants for the treatment of ankle fractures: A meta-analysis

“…Yet, there were several patients that required reoperations for the following two reasons: i) the non-specific tissue response elicited by the degradation and absorption of the materials in the tissue and ii) AIs made of polymer materials are not as strong as metal ones. Refracture is a great threat following surgery (23). As Kankare et al (17) declared, certain patients did not follow the post-operative instructions and their screws broke, which required immediate surgical removal.…”

Advancements and Frontiers in the High Performance of Natural Hydrogels for Cartilage Tissue Engineering

“…However, many of these polymers present an immune response or toxicity, particularly when combined with certain polymers and are not capable of being incorporated with host tissues. They exhibit lower biological activity because of their potential for a local pH increase by acidic degradation products, inflammatory response, poor degradation, and inflammation associated with high molecular weight polymers (Katti et al, 2002;Gunja and Athanasiou, 2006;Pina and Ferreira, 2012;Pereira et al, 2014).…”

The Advantages of Bioresorbable INION� Implants in Traumatology Design, polymer composition and preliminary results

“…Today there is a limitation and a low confidence in using biodegradable implants due to their mechanical properties and polymer strength (which are lower than the traditional metallic implants) [5]. In the same time, the interfragmentary compression is not well realized with the miniscrews and biocompatibility is still an insufficient solved problem [5,7].…”

“…One of the challenges related to medical research is the manufacturing of some biomaterials (biodegradable and bioresorbable) with the necessary characteristics to help with healing of various medical pathologies [2,5].The first biodegradable material used for sutures was collagen which degraded proteolytically and disappeared due to phagocytosis, causing a local inflammation of the tissue [6,7]. Many macromolecular compounds are biodegradable but few of them have the necessary properties to be used as internal bone fixation devices.…”