| Sumario: | The osteoconductive properties of HA coatings are well-documented. HA coating is able to enhance bone ingrowth and to reduce early migration of both hip and knee prostheses. Despite the clinical use of HA-coated prostheses several aspects relevant to HA coatings have not been elucidated. The optimum coating quality and surface texture is still a matter of debate. Moreover, the significance of coating resorption is controversial. It has been suggested that resorption disintegrates the coating and reduces the bonding strength between implant and bone and the strength of the coating-implant interface, which might lead to implant loosening, coating delamination and acceleration of third body wear processes. This thesis aimed to investigate the effects of Ca-P coating type, quality and surface texture on mechanical fixation, bone ingrowth and loss of coating in experimental models in dogs and man. Furthermore, the significance of systematic sampling in bone histomorphometry using the unbiased stereological vertical section method was analyzed.: Results. The first group of studies showed that HA-coated implants with porous-coated surface demonstrated increased energy absorption compared with grit-blasted implants during both non weight-bearing and weight-bearing conditions with controlled micromotion of 500 [mu]m. In addition, the HA coating delaminated on gritblasted implants during mechanical testing in contrast to porous-coated implants. Histomorphometry showed increased bone ingrowth to grit-blasted implants demonstrating that surface topology influenced surface activity. The next series of studies focused on the effects of Ca-P coating type, HA versus FA, during stable weight-bearing and non weight-bearing conditions. In dogs, no difference in mechanical fixation and bone ingrowth was demonstrated. However, in humans, HA-coated implants had significantly greater bone ongrowth than FA-coated implants after one year. The third group of studies evaluated the...
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