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No metal plates or screws needed: a new 3D-printed ceramic implant mends broken legs by holding the fractured parts together, then turning into natural bone.
The implant has the same strength as real bone, and is made by Hala Zreiqat at the University of Sydney in Australia and her colleagues. In previous studies, they showed the material could completely heal broken arm bones in rabbits. Now, in work yet to be published, they have shown it can also repair large leg fractures in sheep.
The eight sheep in the study were able to walk on the implants immediately after surgery, with plaster casts helping to stabilise their legs for the first four weeks. The researchers saw complete healing in 25 per cent of the fractures after three months and 88 per cent after one year. X-rays showed that as the real bones grew back, the