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Your health is your wealth. The beauty of living in an age of rapid innovation is the fact that there are possibilities that exist that will facilitate your healing. A principle of life is that if you seek, you will find. Be proactive and see what is possible in your healing. In some instances, traditional therapies don’t provide relief, but in other instances there are moments where new innovations are actually the therapies that you are looking for.
Statistically, there is a worldwide expansion of bone disorders. In 2020 alone, there will be a possibility of a doubling of the number of persons on the globe with a bone disorder. The primary root cause of this, is influenced by the fact that the population is aging. With the advent of new technologies however, it is possible that these increasing cases of bone conditions can be handled when they arise. Essentially, from the orthopaedic realm, the aim is to ensure that human longevity and mobility can be facilitated. With advances in healing therapies that are being developed now, it will be possible for full recovery if the emergence of a bone condition were to emerge.
ENGINEERED BONE TISSUE
Engineered bone tissue is currently under review as a potential therapy that will enable healing of bone conditions. Within the body, there are some parts of the body that take a long time to heal. Bones are one such area. If there’s a bone condition, or even a situation such as a fracture, it will take months or even years for the bone to heal, once an appropriate scaffold or a cast is applied to the area.
With age, the growth factors and other healing elements in the body actually diminish. Stem cell therapy currently places us in a situation where we can facilitate further healing. Aside from that, it is now becoming possible to engineer bone tissue that will facilitate restoration of bones. For healing therapies such as bone grafts, engineered bone tissue is ideal. This is because the engineered bone will be readily available, but based on the source, there will be limited odds of the body rejecting or reacting to the graft.
Bone tissue engineering, is still in the development phases of implementation in the medical realm. The limiting factor to clinical practice and administration is the standardization of the process utilized to manufacture the engineered bone tissue. Achieving this objective in the development of functional bone regeneration will be the integration of biomaterials, cells and growth factors in the development process.
Bone Grafts
Bone grafts facilitate the bone repair and regeneration process. Utilizing bone grafts to the healing process is scientifically found to be a better approach to the repair process than the utilization of the patient’s own tissue. This discovery has generated a higher degree of implementation of bone grafts. With the increases in bone conditions escalating, the ability to be able to treat these conditions as they arise is the ideal path forward. Additionally, with the ability to heal and repair bone, bone grafts have the benefits of:
- High osteoinductive and angiogenic potentials
- Biological safety
- Low patient morbidity
- No size restrictions
- Ready access to surgeons
- Long shelf life and reasonable cost
Utilizing the current advances developed by teams of scientists, engineers and surgeons, there are great strides being taken in the development of bone grafts that are optimizing bone repair and regeneration. Utilizing an understanding of bone structure, bone mechanics and tissue formation, the team of researchers is identifying how the bone grafts are adapting to the internal environment in the body.
Bone, as a material is a quite versatile. The internal functions of our bones are more than just the ability of the bone to keep the body upright. The bones:
- Facilitate your body’s motion
- Bear the body’s load
- Protection of internal organs
- Trapping of dangerous materials such as lead
- Facilitating homeostasis in the body, by ensuring that key electrolytes are able to transition from the bone into the blood stream and vice versa.
Bones are constantly changing via a process of resorption and renewal, and they do this in the chemical environment that surrounds them in our bodies. The intention of bone tissue engineering will ensure that these critical functions are maintained. Understanding the mechanisms that facilitate bone development via mechanisms that are akin to the natural methods of intramembraneous and endochrondal mechanisms will take the field forward.
There is lots of room for improvement in the orthopaedic field. These advances are ones to look forward to. Talk to your orthopaedic specialist today, if you feel like such a technology can benefit your own condition.
Reference:
Bone Tissue Engineering:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3766369/
