In-vivo biodegradation of glasses: images of bioactivity

The work takes into consideration the in-vivo degradative aspects of three different glasses, showing some aspects of their bioactivity. Sterilized granules of Bioglass, S53P4 and A-WG glass granules were implanted in rabbit dorsal muscles and in sheep’s mandible. Aher 60 days of implantation, the materials with the living tissues were explanted, embedded in PPMA and sectioned for the histologic and scanning electron microscopic observations. Elemental microanalyses with an Energy Dispersive System were carried out to check the degradation of the materials through the topographic distribution of the elements. The three different glasses exhibited different states of degradation with different interactions with the soli and hard tissues for the same implatation tissues.