Making surgical screws from bones
Biomechanics from TU Graz, are developing surgical screws from donated human bone material for foot and jaw surgery together with surgebright, a start-up from Linz, Austria.
To heal broken bones using medical help, the surgical method of choice for decades have been metal screws, mainly made of titanium or stainless steel. During and after the healing process, these metal screws are seen by the body as disturbing foreign bodies and often have to be removed in a further unpleasant surgical intervention.
Together with TU Graz’s Institute of Biomechanics, in 2013 orthopaedist Klaus Pastl developed an alternative in orthopaedics and accident surgery: the “Shark Screw,” made of the specially compact and hard middle layer of the human thigh bone (femur). So what exactly are the advantages of screws made of donated bone material? The metal doesn’t have to be removed and a second operation – as unpleasant as it is risky and expensive – doesn’t have to be carried out because the donated material has completely healed into the bones. So well healed that the transplant is no longer visible in an x-ray after one year. On top of this, the body recognises the bone screws as belonging to its own body, and danger of infection and complications is reduced to a minimum. The Shark Screw is being produced from the start-up surgebright, which was founded in 2016, in cooperation with the German Institute for Tissue and Cell Replacement (DIZG) in Berlin. The patented technology is already being used in 14 Austrian hospitals.
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