Magnesium an Optimal Material for Orthopedic Implants: A Review

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, VNR Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad 500090, India
² Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Erode 638401, India, E-mail: sundars@bitsathy.ac.in
³ Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College, Madagadipet, Puducherry, India, Email: janagiraman16@smvec.ac.in

^* Corresponding Author: satyaprasad.sv@gmail.com

Abstract

Factors such as age, accidents, illness and injuries are responsible for fracture and defects in bones. The issue is on the rise in vastly populated countries like India. Hence researchers have focussed on developing biocompatible implants to support the bone healing process without any damage to the surrounding tissues. The biocompatible orthopaedic implants can be either permanent or temporary. The permanent implants have to be manually removed once the bone heals, and this requires an additional surgery. The temporary implants eliminate this second surgery because once inserted, they facilitate bone repair and degrade within the body without any harmful side effects. Hence, they are also called as biodegradable implants. Magnesium is used in orthopaedic implants because its mechanical properties have close resemblance to the human cortical bone. It exhibits the properties desired by an implant. But due to its high chemical activity, corrosion is a major issue with Magnesium does not possess the sufficient mechanical properties to withstand the load in human body environment. Therefore, extensive research is being done on enhancing the properties of Mg based implants to withstand the loads and the duration of bone healing. This research focuses on the detailed analysis of magnesium for orthopaedic applications.