Physical Characterization of Injectable Bone Substitute Associated-3D Printed Bone Scaffold for Spinal Tuberculosis

There are two important factors to overcome spinal tuberculosis, i.e. killing and preventing the Mycobacterium tuberculosis to spread, also replacing and reconstructing the damaged bone. This study focused on an innovation to overcome the spinal tuberculosis problem by combining the IBS and 3D printed bone scaffold. This innovation could provide a local drug delivery system along with tissue regeneration and bone reconstruction. In this study, 3D printed bone scaffold which have been injected with IBS were tested its physical characterizations. The bone scaffold was fabricated from Polylactide acid (PLA) filament using FDM method through an ordinary commercial 3D printer. The IBS was synthesized from nanohydroxyapatite, gelatin, streptomycin, and HPMC. The physical characterization performed in this study were porosity test functional group test, and degradation test. From those characterizations, it could be concluded that the IBS associated-3D printed bone scaffold is a potential alternative to overcome spinal tuberculosis.