Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
13
Regenerative Medicine: Reconstruction of Tracheal and
Pharyngeal Mucosal Defects in Head and Neck Surgery
Dorothee Rickert , Bernhard Hiebl , Rosemarie Fuhrmann , Friedrich Jung ,
Andreas Lendlein , and Ralf - Peter Franke
13.1
Introduction
13.1.1
History of Implant Materials
The 20th century can be called the era of synthetical polymers. Poly(methyl meth-
acrylate) (PMMA) was fi rstly recognized as promising implant material through
war-wounded pilots in World War II: Soft tissue and eye injuries induced by and
containing small fractions of bursting windows of airplane cockpits (PMMA) led
to minute foreign body reactions only. Szilagyi
et al
. reported fi rst clinical experi-
ences with
polyethylene terephthalate
as vascular arterial prostheses in 1958 [1]. In
the 1960s, J. Charnley, an orthopedic surgeon from United Kingdom developed a
functional and cemented total hip endoprosthesis based on steel and ultrahigh
molecular weight polyethylene inlays which were cemented into the femoral bone
using PMMA as “cement.” Beginning at the end of the 1960s, there was a focus
on the development of degradable polymeric implant materials.
Since then the availability of so-called polymer systems allows a large- scale vari-
ation of material characteristics, for example, of mechanical properties or hydro-
lytic degradation and thus to adapt these materials to specifi c local requirements
in the organism [2].
13.1.2
Regenerative Medicine
Due to the shift in morbidity spectrum during the last decades and the recent
demographic development in the world, the clinical medicine has to deal more
and more with diseases gradually leading to a loss of function of important cell
and organ systems. In many cases, these diseases cannot be cured by the currently
available therapies and the patients have to remain in permanent therapy resulting
in high costs.
