Bone printing: new frontiers in the treatment of bone defects.

Abstract

Bone defects can be congenital or acquired resulting from trauma, infection, neoplasm and failed arthroplasty. The osseous reconstruction of these defects is challenging. Unfortunately, none of the current techniques for the repair of bone defects has proven to be fully satisfactory. Bone tissue engineering (BTE) is the field of regenerative medicine (RM) that focuses on alternative treatment options for bone defects that will ideally address all the issues of the traditional techniques in treating large bone defects. However, current techniques of BTE is laborious and have their own shortcomings. More recently, 2D and 3D bone printing has been introduced to overcome most of the limitations of bone grafts and BTE. So far, results are extremely promising, setting new frontiers in the management of bone defects.