TMJ TJR Biomaterials

All engineering constructs require appropriate materials to meet safety and effectiveness standards. It is an unfortunate observation that in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, synthetic materials were utilized in the management of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pathology that proved to be inappropriate and—sometimes—even dangerous. This was a failure that remains an embarrassment to the biomaterials community and to the bioengineering designers who selected those materials and are now redoubling their current efforts to do better.