BIOMATERIAL APPLICATIONS - Advanced Biomaterials: Fundamentals, Processing, and Applications - page 525

15.1 OVERVIEW
The potential use of various types of advanced biomaterials for biomedical
applications is ever-increasing and development of new types of biomaterials
and their applications is becoming more and more important and challenging. A
large number of biomaterials have received great success in their respective
applications in human health; however, much needs to be done to improve the
quality of these biomaterials and expand their applications for human healthcare.
This introductory chapter on biomaterial applications provides a review of some
of the successes and critical challenges of this fi eld in health-related applications.
A brief overview of some of the common biomaterial applications is also
discussed.
15.2 INTRODUCTION
Biomaterials have shown potential to improve the quality of life for a large
number of people every year. The range of applications is vast and includes
important uses such as joint and limb replacements, artifi cial arteries and skin,
contact lenses, and dental and orthopedic implants. While the implementation of
some of these materials may be for medical reasons—such as the replacement
of diseased tissues required to extend life expectancy—other reasons may
include purely aesthetic ones such as breast implants or cosmetic surgeries. This
increasing demand arises from an ageing population with higher quality-of-life
expectations. The use of synthetic or natural materials to improve the health
conditions of mankind is an established area of research. The range of available
biomaterials is wide and ranges from hardest of metals like titanium to “tissue-
like” soft polymeric hydrogels. The choice of biomaterial depends on the type of
its application.
However, in early times the biomaterials that were used in their natural form
without much processing often led to infl ammation and non-biocompatibility.
Modern biomaterial science is characterized by a growing emphasis on identifi ca-
tion of specifi c design parameters that are critical to performance, and by a
growing appreciation of the need to integrate biomaterial design with new insights
emerging from studies of cell-matrix interactions, cellular signaling processes,
and developmental and systems biology.
Several advances have been made in understanding disease mechanisms as
well as human development and repair. These advances provide various clues that
have improved the quality of biomaterials with better processing, specifi cally
leading to improved biocompatibility. The advances in material science and other
engineering fi elds have widened the scope of biomaterials by providing a clear
understanding of the properties of materials and ways to improve them for spe-
cifi c applications. Biomaterials have an enormous impact on human health care.
Applications include medical devices, diagnostics, sensors, drug delivery systems,
and tissue engineering.