Implants

The placement of implants in patients with aggressive periodontitis has always been questioned. The presence of highly pathogenic bacteria, severe periodontal bone destruction and the refractory nature of this disease tends to deter the clinician from placing implants in these patients. With good patient compliance and regular maintenance, the placement of implants in these patients becomes a viable treatment option. The following is a report of an implant placed in one such patient and successfully followed up over a period of 5 years.

Openly porous structures in implants are desirable for better integration with the host tissue. We develop sintered microbead-based titanium implants for oto-rhinolaryngology applications, which create an environment where the cells can migrate in the areas between the microbeads. This structure promotes fibrovascular tissue formation within the implant in vivo. In this study, we determine to what extent these events can be controlled by changing the physical environment of the implants both in vitro and in vivo. By cell tracking, we observed that the size of the beads and the distance between the neighboring beads significantly affect the ability of cells to develop cell-to-cell contacts and to bridge the pores. Live cell staining shows that as the bead size gets smaller, the probability to observe cells that fill the porous areas is higher. This also affects the initial attachment and distribution of the cells and collagen secretion by fibroblasts. Obtaining a fast coverage of the system also enables co-culture systems where, the number and the distribution of the second cell type are boosted by the presence of the first. This concept is utilized to increase the attachment of vascular endothelial cells by an initial layer of fibroblasts. By decreasing the bead diameter, the overall colonization of the implant can be significantly increased in vivo. The effect of bead size has a similar pattern both in rats and rabbits, with faster colonization of smaller bead-based structures. Using smaller beads would improve clinical outcomes as faster integration facilitates the attainment of functionality by the implant.

Medical advancements in the 21st century have enabled people to do things that were once beyond our imagination. Medical science today is not only limited to curing diseases but it also includes cochlear implants, eye implants, organ donation/ transfer etc. It was in the 1960s that the ASPS (American Society of Plastic Surgeons) found a new substance called silicone to treat skin imperfections. The experiment escalated to a point that the MD of Houston, Thomas Cronin discovered that the same element could be used in breast implants. Since then, there have been around 15.7 million minimally invasive cosmetic procedures and about 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures that include breast augmentation, liposuction, nose reshaping, eyelid surgeries and tummy tuck (statistics provided by ASPS). However, apart from the people who indulge in such types of surgeries to fix their imperfections, there are also a group of people who have undergone unnecessary and harsh surgeries in order to express their thoughts or to look like a cartoon character they fantasized in their childhood. The Barbie or the cartoon characters were created to imitate humans, but in the present scenario, people have the mindset to imitate cartoons and dolls. Makeup was not enough to hide bodily imperfections which is why some people resorted to solving them with surgeries, 'the permanent solution'. This paper looks into the cases of Pixee Fox, Valeria Lukyanova and Vinny Ohh particularly, who have undergone drastic surgeries to look animated. Even though the far-reaching possibilities of medical science has been proved through these patients (victims), it cannot be denied that such unnecessary surgeries need to be stopped because it is harmful and has resulted to side effects and deaths.

The possibility to accelerate osseointegrationand/or to improve bone quality around an implant is thesubject of the present literature review.The following key words were searched on Pubmed: ac-celerate, improvement, osseointegration. The publicationdate span was set from 2009 to 2013. Combinations of  the search terms retrieved the following results: a) ac-celerate and osseointegration: 78 papers; b) improve-ment and osseointegration: 206 papers. A supplementary search on the surgical techniques available for alveolar ridge augmentation for the last 10 years, found 457 pa-pers. After a systematic review of the above papers thefollowing are concluded:1. Guided bone regeneration (GBR) is the most thor-oughly examined technique of bone growth around adental implant placed into a poor alveolar bone.2. The dental implants’ surface treatment trends aim toless invasive and more sophisticated techniques, with theuse of nanotechnology.3. Implant surface coating with adhesion peptides and/or inorganic calcium compounds in thin layers may amplify  the biochemistry of osseointegration.4. Other, non-biochemical methods, are being tested ex-perimentally to inhibit or decrease the alveolar bone lossaround an implant and finally 5. The systemic administration of osteoclastic inhibitors,such as bisphosphonates or strontium seems to acceler-ate the initial stage of osseointegration.These findings represent an approximate prediction for  the future development of osseointegration research andpose research questions for further study

In craniomaxillofacial surgical procedures, an emerging practice adopts the preoperative virtual planning that uses medical imaging (computed tomography), 3D thresholding (segmentation), 3D modeling (digital design), and additive manufacturing (3D printing) for the procurement of an end-use implant. The objective of this case study was to evaluate the cumulative spatial inaccuracies arising from each step of the process chain when various computed tomography protocols and thresholding values were independently changed. A custom-made quality assurance instrument (Phantom) was used to evaluate the medical imaging error. A sus domesticus (domestic pig) head was analyzed to determine the 3D thresholding error. The 3D modeling error was estimated from the computer-aided design software. Finally, the end-use implant was used to evaluate the additive manufacturing error. The results were verified using accurate measurement instruments and techniques. A worst-case cumulative error of 1.7 mm...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a workflow for 3D modeling and additive manufacturing (AM) of patient‐specific medical implants. The comprehensive workflow consists of four steps: medical imaging; 3D modelling; additive manufacturing; and clinical application. Implants are used to reconstruct bone damage or defects caused by trauma or disease. Traditionally, implants have been manually bent and shaped, either preoperatively or intraoperatively, with the help of anatomic solid models. The proposed workflow obviates the manual procedure and may result in more accurate and cost‐effective implants.Design/methodology/approachA patient‐specific implant was digitally designed to reconstruct a facial bone defect. Several test pieces were additive manufactured from stainless steel and titanium by direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) technology. An additive manufactured titanium EOS Titanium Ti64 ELI reconstruction plate was successfully implanted onto the patient's injured ...

In order to fit human body, flexibility, or even better stretchability is requested for biomedical systems like implants or smart clothes. A stretchable electronic technology has been developed. This can provide highly stretchable interconnections fully compatible with PCB technologies. In order to prove the feasibility of complex biomedical systems like inner body implants or wearable systems, a variety of stretchable systems has been designed from sensor to power source systems.

Medical advancements in the 21st century have enabled people to do things that were once beyond our imagination. Medical science today is not only limited to curing diseases but it also includes cochlear implants, eye implants, organ donation/ transfer etc. It was in the 1960s that the ASPS (American Society of Plastic Surgeons) found a new substance called silicone to treat skin imperfections. The experiment escalated to a point that the MD of Houston, Thomas Cronin discovered that the same element could be used in breast implants. Since then, there have been around 15.7 million minimally invasive cosmetic procedures and about 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures that include breast augmentation, liposuction, nose reshaping, eyelid surgeries and tummy tuck (statistics provided by ASPS). However, apart from the people who indulge in such types of surgeries to fix their imperfections, there are also a group of people who have undergone unnecessary and harsh surgeries in order to ...