The processing and characterization of animal-derived bone to yield materials with biomedical applications. Part III: material and mechanical properties of fresh and processed bovine cancellous bone

Conversion of bovine cancellous bone to a useful biomedical xenograft mater ial involves several processing steps which include boiling, defatting and deproteination (i.e. bleaching). This study has shown how these processes c an influence cancellous bone modulus and strength. It was found that prolon ged boiling in water for six hours followed by NaOCI bleaching had a delete rious effect on the overall strength of the bovine bone. In contrast, bone samples subjected to only moderate boiling (1.5 hours) exhibited a 22% stif fness increase due mainly to the effects of drying. The same stiffened samp les, when subjected to the bleaching procedure, retained some strength with only a small reduction in moduli values. It can be concluded that careful control of defatting and bleaching procedures on bovine bone is able to giv e a strong, albeit, brittle material with preservation of the original bone architecture. The bone xenograft materials are worthy of further investiga tion in in vivo clinical trials to assess their performance in contact with biological fluids. (C) 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.