Histologically demonstrated skull bone integration in a hydroxyapatite prosthesis in a human.

摘要

Surgical treatment for skull bone defects consists of cranioplasty using different materials including polyme-thylmethacrylate, titanium, resin prostheses, polyesther and ceramics [1-4]. The increasing tendency to employ decom-pressive craniectomy for the treatment of cerebral trauma has led to the need for high-quality materials that can possibly be both resistant and biocompatible. An additional advantage could be osteoinductivity, with promotion of osteoblastic migration across the prosthesis. This property can be found in porous custom-made hydroxyapatite (HA) prostheses, which have been shown to induce ostedgenesis in experimental animal models [4]. We had the opportunity to demonstrate that osteogenesis induced by bioceramic protheses occurs also in humans.