CLINICAL-APPLICATIONS OF CALCIUM-PHOSPHATE BIOMATERIALS - A REVIEW

It has been known for more than twenty years that ceramics made of calcium phosphate salts can be used successfully for replacing and augmenting bone tissue.(1.2) This can be understood from the structure of bone itself: it is a composite structure, consisting of a continuous phase (made of collagenous proteins and other biological polymers, and physiological fluid), in which small calcium phosphate crystals are dispersed. Thus bioceramics made of calcium phosphate are not foreign and hence are biologically compatible with living bone. In this paper, several aspects of bioceramics of calcium phosphates are discussed, namely, their physical-chemical structure, mechanical properties, and biodegradation, their use as coatings on mechanically strong substrates, and their clinical uses.