Effect of Hydrogel Injection on the Biomechanical Behaviour of Herniated Discs

Hydrogels for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

“…In addition to the mechanical properties of hydrogels which are easily tuneable to mimic so tissues, their in situ swelling to ll a void space also presents them as ideal IVD prosthetics with the ability to be implanted either in a dry state or small volume and subsequently swell to ll any available space within the degenerated nucleus pulposus. 124 Many hydrogels are under investigation in this area using both in vivo 125 and in vitro strategies including poly-N-acetyl glucosamine which has demonstrated in vitro to possess similar mechanical properties to human nucleus pulposus tissue whist maintaining the phenotype of primary human disc cells. 126 The study considered two variants of poly-N-acetyl glucosamine in which poly-N-acetyl glucosamine nanobres used to synthesise the hydrogels were shortened to 5-7 mm or their native length of 80 mm.…”