Electrical Potential on Boundary of Osseointegrated Implant and Bone

Abstract

Osseointegration could be described as the modality for stable fixation of titanium implant to bone structure. The OI has become a realized phenomenon of importance in the dental and rehabilitation sciences since recently developed dentures and artificial limbs are directly attached to human skeleton by using osseointegrated (OI) implants. Previously, the electricity-generating capability of bone had been investigated when it is subjected to mechanical loads. This is related to static and dynamic capability of bone, so-called linear piezoelectric and streaming potential effect respectively. Streaming potential or bone strain generated potential (SGP) is an electrical potential and considered to be generated by fluid flow in bone. Bone Piezoelectric potential (PZP) is an electrical potential and considered to be generated by deformation in bone. Since changes in boundaries on bone-implant affect deformations of bone matrix and interstitial bone fluid flow, it could be postulated that SGPZP could be used as a parameter to examine the amount of osseointegration on bone-implant interface. Since no study was performed to understand effects of loading rate changes on behavior of SGPZP for the bone-implant composite, rate dependent behavior of SGPZP was investigated in this study. Magnitude of SGPZP was found to be significantly increased as the rate increased for OI bone-implant composite. In contrast, the time duration of SGPZP was decreased as the rate increased. These results could imply that the temporal SGPZP behavior of bone-implant composite is significantly affected by the loading rate. 