An article in Advanced Materials highlighted applications for titanium fiber plates in bone repair.
Here are three things to know:
1. While titanium plates are used for their high bone affinity, they are unsuitable for bone repair due to their high elastic modulus. The plates' proximity to the surface of the bone for prolonged periods can cause stress shielding and lead to bone embrittlement.
2. Titanium fiber plates, however, can have an elastic modulus similar to that of bone cortex. Titanium fibers can form a porous structure suitable for cell adhesion and as a bone repair scaffold.
3. The study combined a titanium fiber plate with osteoblasts and demonstrated the titanium fiber plate is better able to facilitate bone tissue repair than the conventional titanium plate when implanted in rat bone defects.
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