Niobium in Oral Surgery

Metallic biomaterials are widely used in craniomaxillofacial surgery, and are often used as substitutes for bone deformities and defects as well as scaffolding materials to improve the quality of life of patients, among which representative metallic biomaterials are stainless steel, cobalt-chromium alloys, titanium and titanium alloys. Among these metallic materials, stainless steel has better ductility and cyclic torsional strength; cobalt-chromium alloys have the highest stiffness and wear resistance, as well as relatively high strength; and titanium alloys have the best biocompatibility, corrosion resistance, and specific strength (ratio of tensile strength to density), but the lowest stiffness.

In addition to the mechanical properties, because of the need for long-term implantation in the human body, some of which may need to be removed at a later stage, biological indicators such as biocompatibility and cytotoxicity of metallic biomaterials have received extensive attention from researchers, and many attempts have been made to enhance and improve them. Lowering the modulus of elasticity of metallic materials to make them as close as possible to the bone tissue in order to reduce the stress-masking effect is one of the directions of recent researchers' efforts. Earlier studies have shown that the addition of the non-toxic metal elements niobium, zirconium, tantalum and molybdenum to titanium alloys is effective in lowering the modulus of elasticity of the alloys and improving corrosion resistance. Nevertheless, the literature on the application of niobium and its alloys in the field of craniomaxillofacial surgery is relatively scarce.

Kondo et al. showed that Nb-2Zr alloys in simulated body fluids exhibit excellent corrosion resistance and fatigue strength.Kanetaka et al. demonstrated reliable biocompatibility of their newly developed Ti-Nb-Al memory alloy in drawdown osteogenesis experiments on rat skulls.Vandrovcova et al. [ml performed osteoblast-like cell S-type tests on thermally oxidized titanium-niobium alloys. Vandrovcova et al[ml analyzed the cellular activity of osteoblast-like cells Saos-2 and MG-63 on thermally oxidized titanium-niobium alloys and showed that both pure titanium and titanium-niobium alloys treated with thermal oxidation have the effect of increasing the cellular activity, but the effect of titanium-niobium alloys tends to promote the proliferation of osteoblasts, whereas pure titanium tends to induce the cellular differentiation.