A review of current developments in three-dimensional scaffolds for medical applications

Humans require treatment due to the loss of tissues after trauma and diseases. Tissue engineering is a growing field of engineering and medical science to restore, maintain, or improve function of damaged or diseased tissues. The use of three-dimension (3D) scaffolds in particular offers a potential option for patients with tissue deficiency. Polylactic acid (PLA), poly-caprolactone (PCL), polyether-ether-ketone (PEEK), and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) are biomaterials that are commonly used in tissue engineering. Their applications of pure material or composite and supportive materials are of great importance for clinical practices. This review provides information on biomaterials and major areas of application and discusses their advantages and disadvantages against each other. The literature search from the database PubMed was done for the key words 3D PLA, PCL, PEEK, and TPU separately and 2029 articles were identified. These articles were limited according to clinical, in vivo and observational studies published in English and 140 articles were evaluated for this review. We selected the main articles according to the current data of 3D scaffolds and identical articles were removed. Fifty articles were included in the review. Many studies have reported the advantages of 3D scaffolds with composite or supplement materials over pure materials in the medical treatment. The advances in the development of new 3D scaffolds hold great promise for the prospective applications in the medical treatment.