Osteomyelitis and associated soft-tissue infections are ubiquitous problems. The standard of treatment for these patients includes a combination of intravenous and/or local antibiotics, multiple operative irrigations, and debridement procedures with or without bone stabilization which requires multiple surgeries and a prolonged hospital stay, with associated increased healthcare costs. The widespread practice to prevent infection is to insert antibiotic beads into a progressing-healing bone. However, the rapid drug release from the beads does not sustain long enough to prevent infections.
Our research proposes biodegradable magnesium-based implants which are layered with different polymer-antibiotic combinations to control drug release for prolonged-release and prevent high healthcare cost. Our group studies different methods such as electrospinning and dip-coating to coat the magnesium alloyed rods.
References
[1] S. K. Chuah, M. Y. Bajuri, and F. Mohd Nor, “Chronic osteomyelitis revisited: A case report,” Cureus, 2019.