Our Short-term Experience with the Use of S53p4 (BonAlive®) Bioactive Glass as a Bone Graft Substitute

Objective: To analyze the results of using S53P4 as a bone graft substitute in a series of orthopaedic procedures.
Methods: We included a number of 9 patients in our study between July 2010 and March 2011. There were 4 cases of cystic or tumoral lesions, 2 revision total hip replacements, 1 primary hip replacement, 1 calcaneus fracture and 1 case on femoral supracondylar non-union. All were treated using bioactive glass as a bone substitute alone, or in conjunction with morselized allografts and autogenous bone grafts. Patients were evaluated clinically and radiologically at 1, 3 and 6 months after surgery.
Results: We found good results on clinical evaluation and radiological evaluation showed signs of graft osteo-integration and incorporation of the synthetic bone substitute in all cases.
Conclusions: Our preliminary results have shown that bioactive glass (S53P4) can be successfully used as a bone substitute material in all of the presented pathological conditions. We believe that this type of synthetic bone substitute will become more popular in the future, due to its special properties.