Application of medical tantalum and porous tank in stomatology

Tantalum metal has been used as implant material in the treatment of patients with missing teeth. With the development of technology, porous tantalum is also tried to be used in the field of implant. Due to its outstanding mechanical properties, biological properties, elastic modulus comparable to bone tissue and high friction coefficient, it can provide good osseointegration and initial stability for implants, which is called trabecular implants. In addition, Its elastic modulus (between cancellous bone and dense bone) is comparable to that of bone tissue, which enables the long-term oral functional load of the implant to disperse the dental force to the surrounding bone, avoiding stress concentration.

Experiments have shown that in the process of dental force loading, the traditional implant can absorb 30% of the load energy, while the porous tantalum implant can absorb 50%-75% of the load energy. The high friction coefficient makes it have good initial stability in the process of implant implantation, so as to improve the bonding rate of the implanted teeth, especially for the patients with poor bone quality. At the same time, Professor Hongchen Liu proposed the concept of drug delivery in artificial teeth. It is expected to improve the healing ability of damaged bone in the state of bone metabolic diseases on the basis of promoting the osseointegration of implants by means of drug delivery in porous tantalum artificial teeth. In addition, the role of porous tantalum in the reconstruction of jaw defects is also being studied. The pore structure of porous tantalum is similar to bone tissue and provides a good scaffold for the growth of bone tissue.

Related studies have confirmed that porous tantalum particles have good osteogenesis induction ability, and its effect in repairing jaw defects is better than bio-OSS bone meal commonly used in clinical practice. In this study, the model of jaw bone defects was constructed, and porous tantalum particles and Bio-OSS bone meal were implanted into the right and left mandibular bone defects of beagles, respectively. After three months, the results of gross specimen, X-ray and hard tissue section showed that the bone formation and maturity of bone tissue in the group of porous tantalum particles were higher than those in the control group (Bio- OSS bone meal group).