I recalled 2 months back, Broney had an artificial bone implant. She did not face much difficulty during her road to recovery. Her healing process took a few months and very soon she was up and hopping!

Dr Leevur gave me a brochure regarding bone artificial implants. It was very interesting, so I thought I could share it with my loyal readers.

Enjoy =D

Fast Facts about Bone Artificial Implants:







When need to use artificial implants?

• A tumor of the distal femur would destroy the adjacent bone near to the knee, this would results in the tumor spreading to the muscles, blood vessels and nerve.
• Amputation is necessary so as to minimize the chances of surgical complications. It also ensure that the local tumor is removed.
  

Why need to use artificial implants??

• Patients may be difficult to adapt to the sudden lost in limbs.
• They also can’t accept the change in appearance.

Different types of artificial implants available

• Bone and Joint Transplant (Osteoarticular Allograft.
• Lower end of the femur can be replaced with a bone implants with a joint surface (osteoarticular allograft).
• Bones are joined by metal plates and screws, the muscles and joint ligaments are reattached to the transplant to form a working joint.
• Advantages: normal movement is restored.
• Disadvantages: complexity of the surgical procedure ( possible injry to major blood vessel or nerve)
  

Metallic Prosthesis

• An artificial metallic implant that can be used to replace the entire end of femur and knee joints.
• Rod portion of the implant fits into the hollow marrow cavity in the femur, and secured with bone cement.
• Advantages: faster recovery than allograft.
• Disadvantages: possible cases of loosening, breakage and erosion.
  

Arthrodesis

• It is a permanent joint fusion.
• A section of bone graft (obtained from another site in the body or from a bone bank) is used to bridge the gap between the femur and tibia (knitting the bones at both ends) and is held in place by metal plates, screws or rods.
• Advantages: walking and running and non-contacts sports are possible after healing.
• Disadvantages: stiff knee
  
  

Then I asked Dr Leevur about corneal transplant, since it's very popular these days. I think he is too tired to explain to be any further, he gave me a brochure.

Good thing this way, I have hard copy of the information! yayyy!

CORNEAL TRANSPLANTATION

• It is also known as keratoplasty.
• The cornea come from a dead person.
• Cornea is composed entirely of a special type of collagen.
• Cornea normally contain no blood vessel.

Purpose??

• Use when vision is lost in an eye due to damage of cornea.
• Surgery would only be carried out if only corrective lenses are useless with the case.

Process

• A disc of tissue is removed from the centre of the eye.
• It is then substituted by a corresponding tissue from the donor’s eye.
• The incision is made by a instrument called a trephine.
• The disc removed and replaced is the entire thickness of the cornea.

http://www.coleb.org/images/corneal_transplants2.jpg


• Very low risks of rejections.
• This is because cornea contains no blood vessels, thus it would have low rate of rejections.
• This is because allograft rejection occurs due to reaction between the patient’s immune system and the donor tissue, which is triggered by histocompatibility antigens.
• Histocompatibility antigens is often associated with vascular tissue ( blood tissue) within the graft tissue.

Health A to Z (2004). Corneal Transplantation. Singapore. Retrieved 8 Feb, 2009 from the World Wide Web: http://www.healthatoz.com/healthatoz/Atoz/common/standard/transform.jsp?requestURI=/healthatoz/Atoz/ency/corneal_transplantation.jsp

(:
XOXO