INTRODUCTION AND OBJETIVES

There are roughly 1 million cases in the USA and ½ million in EU of high skeletal defects a year. All of these cases require bone-graft procedures to achieve union, each of which requires the surgeon to determine the type of graft material to be use. The toughest challenge appears when the size of the defect is too big and the reconstruction of this defect requires a bone graft capable of supplying similar physical properties and behavior to the bone being substituted. Unfortunately at this moment commercial scaffolds can not satisfy the following issues:

• To promote new bone formation in order to reduce the time of bone healing and decrease the vascular insult of the implant to the bone and cause less-stress shielding.
• Mechanical properties that match those of human tissue to be regenerated during its new formation.
• Large segment of implants. For patients who have lost large segments of bone due to a congenital defect, degenerative diseases, cancer or accident.