CERAMICS, CELLS AND TISSUES. CERAMIC-POLYMER COMPOSITES

Prefazione - Indice

Prefazione

Many specialists in the field of composite materials were present at 4th CCT together with surgeons coming from different medical disciplines. Composite materials design often provides substantial improvements over existing practices due to various combinations of available materials properties. Where a given material is designed into an application its key- properties have to be characterised from raw materials to finished product with a planning, at the end, of adequate test methods.
The presence at the meeting of experts on composite materials, the assurance to have well carefully treated properties and performances of the material produced is guaranteed, in particular for the surgeons who are the final users of products made with those materials. Surgeons have surely obtained the best information on the best materials thank to the possibility to have at disposal final prototypes coming from the best of the best materials at disposal.
The main subject matter of this meeting-seminar is the preparation, processing and properties of composite made with polymers and ceramics for the biomedical field. Both components must be obviously biocompatible and ideally bioactive. The target of the meeting is to discuss about the characteristic of these materials, their physico-chemical nature, the possible formulation of them, their clinical aspects and their possible expected applications. In many surgical applications, the replacement material must have an appropriate matching of mechanical and biological performances in sites where neither ceramics, nor polymers as monolithic materials would give a positive result. Mouldable composites can be useful also for precise correlation of defects in reconstructive surgery.
Therefore, it is important to focus the attention on ceramic-polymer composites already available or at the prototype stage (to be compared to those obtained either from commercial sources or derived from other materials), and to harmonise existing knowledge. A fundamental aspect of the composite approach is to develop replacement materials which are biological analogues and mimic tissue functions.
Starting from this year a new organic system was experimented by structuring the meeting with the presence of round tables at specific matters to investigate (also proposing suitable oral contributions) some aspects of particular importance connected with the general theme.
This was considered particularly useful in a sector at a so high inter-disciplinarity where material science scientists (in particular chemists and physics) must exchange their ideas and results with scientists of biology field and to interface themselves with the final users (which sometime may be even the promoters too) of biomedical objects, e.g. the surgeons. This collaboration among the operators of different fields forecasts numerous cycles of trials and errors (the last indication is however obviously coming from surgeons) in a continuous dialog often suffered with some difficulties coming also from the kind of jargon utilised in the colloquia by every representative. Furthermore the presence of round tables, at a more investigated and very specific matters, is of a remarkable usefulness in the focalisation of the real existing problems about the matter in the ambit of the so complex collaborations.



Antonio Ravaglioli
Adriano Krajewski