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Review
. 2020 Apr:109:110423.
doi: 10.1016/j.msec.2019.110423. Epub 2019 Nov 12.

Clinical complications of biodegradable screws for ligament injuries

Daisy M Ramos  1 , Ramya Dhandapani  2 , Anuradha Subramanian  3 , Swaminathan Sethuraman  4 , Sangamesh G Kumbar  5
Affiliations
Review

Clinical complications of biodegradable screws for ligament injuries

Daisy M Ramos et al. Mater Sci Eng C Mater Biol Appl. 2020 Apr.

Abstract

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) plays a crucial role stabilizing the knee joint while connecting tibia to femur. Lack of proper treatment of injured ACL can lead to meniscus tear and osteoarthritis. Interference screws secure the graft tissue for superior integration of graft on host tissue during autograft fixation. Metal interference screws come with various disadvantages like mechanical load mismatch, graft laceration, secondary surgical removal and hindrance during MRI and CT post-operative scan. Though biodegradable polymeric screws provide various advantages their clinical outcomes reveal unprecedented complications for long term use of such screws. This review highlights polymer and composite screw currently available for surgical fixations and associated adverse reactions with the proposed mechanism for tunnel enlargement, effusion, osteolysis in ligament repairs. The need for suitable material engineering for development of orthopedic screws for successful rigid fixation has been highlighted in this review.

Keywords: Biodegradable; Ligament injury; Orthopedic screws; Poly(l-lactic acid); Syndesmosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.