Porous Titanium Implants: A Review

Abstract

Titanium and its alloys are commonly used in almost all disciplines of medicine because of their sufficient biocompatibility and meeting of mechanical requirements. However, dense metallic biomaterials represent only an interfacial connection with host tissue, may develop stress shielding which causes ingrowth of the fibrous tissue, and are prone to microbial adhesion and development of biomaterial associated infections. Therefore, development of a new, porous titanium biomaterial is proposed to improve an implant's interconnection with bone, provide better stabilization, and reduce the risk of the loss of the implant. In this review, recent findings in porous titanium biomaterials engineering are discussed, including the structural and strengthening aspects of titanium alloys. The porosity and design of porous structures, as well as the optimization process are also described. An extensive part of this section is dedicated to manufacturing processes. The next section of the review is devoted to osseointegration of porous implants and surface treatment processes, whose purpose are antibacterial activity or local drug delivery. Summarizing the article, some future predictions have been presented.

Influence of the Compaction Pressure and Sintering Temperature on the Mechanical Properties of Porous Titanium for Biomedical Applications

“…The design and manufacture of materials with a Young's modulus close to that of cortical bone has been widely addressed in the scientific literature [10][11][12][13]. Among the possible solutions proposed are the use of metastable β-titanium alloys [14][15][16][17][18] and/or porous materials [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. The bibliography includes up to 34 porous metal processing routes.…”

Investigation of Ti64 sheathed cellular anatomical structure as a tibia implant

“…Titanium has strong compressive properties with relatively low Young's Modulus in comparison to steel. However; bulk titanium exceeds the Young's Modulus of cortical bone by more than three-fold resulting in stress shielding and subsequent weakening of the connection between the bone and the implant (35).…”

A Review on Biomedical Titanium Alloys: Recent Progress and Prospect

“…To avoid this situation, antibacterial implants of Ti alloys are developed based on the idea of anti‐adhesive or anti‐infective . The anti‐adhesive method has a shortcoming for intraosseous implants since the anti‐adhesive surface of implant prevents the surface from pollution, thereby influencing osseointegration . The anti‐infective method enables the implant to kill bacteria on its periphery based on local drug delivery .…”

“…The anti‐adhesive method has a shortcoming for intraosseous implants since the anti‐adhesive surface of implant prevents the surface from pollution, thereby influencing osseointegration . The anti‐infective method enables the implant to kill bacteria on its periphery based on local drug delivery . Therefore, anti‐infective method or combined anti‐infective method and anti‐adhesive strategies are more widely used.…”