Synthetic bone grafts for treatment of femoral head necrosis

Sammanfattning: Necrosis of the femoral head is a relatively common medical condition that radically decrease the quality of life for the patient. Left untreated it could lead to destruction of the hip joint. A common treatment is using bone autografts, also called bone chips. However, in the last decades synthetic bone grafts have become a very interesting alternative. This thesis had two aims; to evaulate how porous hydroxyapatite grafts with varied pore size could be produced by different size of the porogen and to create two-phase cements which would form pores in situ by using a dissolvable phase of calcium sulfate hemihydrate. The phase composition, morphology, porosity and pore size distribution were characterized with x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and micro-computed tomography. It was found that hydroxyapatite granules could be produced and it was possible to vary their pore size to some extent by changing the size of the porogen. At physiological temperature, pores were formed in the two-phase cements from one week and onwards.