Influence of Implant Material on Electrical Biopotentials in Bone Fractures

The increasingly wider scale use of various foreign materials in Orthopaedics and Traumatology require long-term study of their interaction with adjacent bone, with soft tissue, and also the integration of these materials into the bone tissue. One of the likely consequences of using implants and metal fasteners is the production of conductance disturbances of bone which are dependent on the type of material used, with major implications for its biology and by default on fracture healing. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the changes in focal bone fracture biopotentials depending on the chemical composition of biomaterials used. The study is experimental, on a group of 23 Wistar rats which were created femur bone defects that were repaired by autotransplantation of the hip bone with different wire set. The potential difference between the graft and the graft bed was measured and was correlated with the chemical composition of biomaterial. The largest potential differences were reported with aluminium wire, copper, and nickelin wire, while V4A wire (alloy of nickel, chromium and titanium) determined the smallest disturbance of these biopotentials.